Completely dropped: Virgin Orbit successfully fires its LauncherOne rocket again

This January 13, the Virgin Orbit 747 took off again with a LauncherOne rocket under its wing. Over the Pacific, he jettisoned her to begin her journey to orbit. A new successful mission to start a year 2022 which promises to be critical for the company, whose goal is to accelerate its pace.

The images are always spectacular!

Virgin Orbit has its head above the clouds

The mission was aptly named Above The Clouds (above the clouds): At 11:52 p.m. Thursday, January 13, the Virgin Orbit 747 did indeed complete its nose-up and pierced the skies off California to drop its LauncherOne rocket.

Several times postponed, this attempt was crowned with success. Just over an hour later, Virgin Orbit confirmed that the seven small satellites carried on that flight had all ejected into orbit. Four of them were from the US Department of Defense (although one of the four was developed by NASA), two more were dedicated to the Polish operator SatRevolution with an observation satellite and a satellite using a propulsion test, while the last belonged to Spire Global, with a mission to measure debris in low orbit.

LauncherOne, a convincing solution?

For Virgin Orbit, the flight also had demonstration value. The Spire Global satellite, for example, was only added at the end of the year, taking advantage of a “free space” on LauncherOne and emphasizing the rocket’s flexibility of use.

On the other hand, the 747 carrier flew further southwest than in previous flights, and was therefore able to offer a different inclination to its customers. An advantage that traditional operators based, for example in Cape Canaveral or Vandenberg, cannot offer. That said, for the moment, Virgin cannot transport its launch service anywhere… Several sites around the world have given their approval for the Virgin project (which would like to deploy its few necessary containers and its plane in the United United or in Japan), but all the authorizations are not met yet.

And now, a little rhythm!

In addition to the success that confirms the technical choices of Virgin Orbit (three successes in a row in four attempts), the year 2022 is a crucial exercise for the Californian company. It has indeed been listed on the stock exchange for less than a month, and for the moment it is far from being a success… Capital must be attracted, while other space companies have also just arrived on the markets. like Maxar, Planet or even Rocket Lab and Astra, direct competitors of Virgin Orbit.

But above all, for trust to be established, the pace of launches must be able to augur some kind of profitability for the business model. However, Virgin Orbit has only sent its rocket into orbit twice in 2021. It will be necessary to accelerate, and their teams know it. A complex exercise!

Source: space news