Virgin Orbit and Rocket Lab teams are preparing for the first missions of the year in the coming days, with Virgin’s rocket launcher for its second demonstration flight and Rocket Lab’s Electron booster ready to launch a small German communications satellite.
The second test flight of Virgin Orbit’s air hazard LauncherOne vehicle was not scheduled for Wednesday, January 13th. Ten CubeSats from US universities and a NASA research center are aboard the rocket, which will be released from Virgin Orbit’s Boeing 747 aircraft over the Pacific coast off the coast of Southern California.
Rocket Lab’s first flight of 2021 is scheduled for a ten-day opening on Saturday, January 16th. A two-phase electronic launcher will transport a European technology demo satellite in orbit from the base of Rocket Lab in New Zealand for OHB Group, an aviation company. located in Bremen, Germany.
Virgin Orbit, which is part of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, wants to prove its commercial LauncherOne rocket after the first groundbreaking attempt in May failed seconds after falling from the 747 jumbo jet. The company said an interruption in a liquid oxygen supply line to the LauncherOne’s first phase engine caused the failure a few seconds after the engine was started.
The LauncherOne vehicle can deliver up to 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms) of cargo to a low-altitude equatorial orbit, or up to 661 pounds (300 kilograms) to a 310-mile (500-kilometer) pole, according to Virgin Orbit.
Virgin Orbit aims to join Rocket Lab as the only companies in a new wave of privately funded retailers to successfully place a payload in a lane. Astra, another startup, successfully launched a rocket into space from Alaska last month, but the top stage switched off prematurely, only shy of orbital speed.
Rocket Lab successfully reached the track for the first time in 2018. The company’s Electron rocket family has launched 17 times so far, with two failures, deploying nearly 100 small satellites for commercial customers, NASA and the U.S. military.
The 18th Electron launch, launched no earlier than January 16, will feature a small communications satellite for OHB.
According to Rocket Lab, the seven-minute opening time opens at 02:38 EST (0738 GMT). The mission will take off from Launch Complex 1A at Rocket Lab’s private spacecraft on Mahia Peninsula, on the North Island of New Zealand.
Rocket Lab is headquartered in Long Beach, California, but conducts final rocket assembly and launch operations in New Zealand. Later this year, Rocket Lab plans to launch its first mission from a new facility at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Virginia and send a small NASA-funded spacecraft to the Moon.
Teams at the launch base of Rocket Lab in New Zealand are also completing the construction of Launch Complex 1B near the company’s first launch site. The company says the first launch of the new road in New Zealand is also scheduled for later this year.
Rocket Lab has the first mission of 2021 nicknamed ‘Another One Leaves the Crust’.
According to Rocket Lab, OHB Group, which builds small and medium-sized satellites, acquired the launch of Rocket Lab through its subsidiary OHB Cosmos.
The payload of OHB is a “single communications microsatellite that enables specific frequencies to support future services from an orbit,” Rocket Lab said in a statement. OHB and Rocket Lab have not released any further details about the satellite built by OHB divisions in Germany, Sweden and the Czech Republic.
Peter Beck, founder and CEO of Rocket Lab, said the launch would take place within six months of the signing of the contract with Rocket Lab and OHB, a relatively quick turnaround for a launch service agreement.
“By flying on Electron as a dedicated mission, OHB and their mission partners have control over launch time, orbit, integration scheme and other mission parameters,” Beck said in a statement.
Rocket Lab has no plans to repair Electron’s first stage during the January 16 mission. The company reached the first phase of Electron for the first time after a launch in November, a first step to eventually reuse Electron boosters to increase the Rocket Lab. launch rate.
Rocket Lab’s seven Electron flights in 2020 set a record for the company, which says it has a “packed” launch schedule of three booklets in 2021.
Virgin Orbit, meanwhile, wants to join Rocket Lab in the small satellite market.
A dedicated launch on Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket sells for approximately $ 12 million, according to industry executives. Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket, with a slightly lower lifting capacity than Virgin’s LauncherOne, costs about $ 7 million per mission.
The effort to develop the LauncherOne rocket began as a project of sister company Virgin Galactic, which focuses on the suborbital space tourism market.
Virgin Galactic says they first studied the LauncherOne concept in 2007, and that development began in earnest in 2012. Engineers scrapped in 2015 the initial plans to drop the rocket from Virgin Galactic’s WhiteKnightTwo aircraft and began developing a redesigned system with a 747 jumbo jet. taken from Virgin Atlantic’s commercial airline fleet.
Virgin Orbit, located in Long Beach – near Rocket Lab’s headquarters – was founded in 2017 as a spinoff of Virgin Galactic. Virgin Orbit investors include Branson’s Virgin Group and Mubadala, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund.
Virgin Orbit’s first demonstration launch in May carried a small spherical satellite called Starshine 4, a passive payload covered with 1,000 small mirrors that were polished by students through an educational program nearly two decades ago.
The 18-pound (18 kg) Starsyne 4 satellite was supposed to launch on a spacecraft mission, but it crashed after other payloads took precedence as the final shuttle flights focused on completing the International Space Station.
The Starshine 4 payload got a free launch on Virgin Orbit’s first test flight, but the satellite never made it around the corner.
NASA is the customer for the second LauncherOne test flight, which Virgin Orbit calls ‘Launch Demo 2’. Virgin Orbit has been delaying the mission since December due to concerns related to the coronavirus pandemic.
In 2015, the US space agency signed a contract with Virgin Galactic, Virgin Orbit’s former parent company, through the Venture Class Launch Services program. NASA has launched the VCLS program to provide nanosatellite rides for an orbit and to give business to startups that develop smallsat launches.
Rocket Lab also has a VCLS contract in 2015. The launch provider successfully completed the VCLS mission in December 2018, when an Electron mission delivered 13 NASA-sponsored CubeSats in orbit.
The 10 CubeSats aboard Virgin Orbit’s Launch Demo 2 mission were built by university students in California, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Tennessee and Utah. NASA pays for the launch of the university-built CubeSats.
Another NASA CubeSat mission, called TechEdSat 7, from the agency’s Ames research center is also aboard the LauncherOne rocket.
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