Updated 19:20 Eastern with comments from Virgin Orbit after the launch.
COVINGTON, La. Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket reached orbit on its second flight on January 17, showing the performance of the air launch system after years of development.
The company’s Boeing 747 aircraft, called Cosmic Girl, took off at 13.38 east of the Mojave Air and Space Port in California with the LauncherOne rocket attached. The plane flew over the Pacific Ocean just off the coast of Southern California, releasing the rocket around 2:39 p.m.
The rocket ignited its NewtonThree first engine for three minutes, followed by separating the stage and igniting the NewtonFour engine in the second phase of the rocket for nearly six minutes. After a coastline of 46 minutes, the NewtonFour burned the rocket for five seconds, followed by the cargo in an orbit of about 500 kilometers, although Virgin Orbit took more than an hour to confirm the final steps.
“A new gateway to space has just opened,” said Virgin Hart, president and CEO of Virgin Orbit, in a statement after the launch, praising the “laser focus” of its business on the program despite technical challenges and the ongoing pandemic. “The effort paid off today with a well-executed mission, and we could not have been happier.”
“Virgin Orbit has achieved something that was considered very impossible,” said Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group, in the statement. “This amazing flight is the culmination of many years of hard work and will also unleash a new generation of innovators on the runway to a runway.”
The launch was the cornerstone of a development program dating back to July 2012, when Virgin Galactic announced it wanted to develop a small launch vehicle to complement its SpaceShipTwo suborbital vehicle. LauncherOne was originally planned to use the same WhiteKnightTwo aircraft as SpaceShipTwo, but the company later decided to purchase a Boeing 747 for use as a carrier aircraft. Virgin Galactic singled out the LauncherOne project in 2017 in a separate company, Virgin Orbit.
The client for the Launch Demo 2 mission was NASA under a contract awarded in 2015 as part of its Venture Class Launch Services program to support emerging small launcher developers. The mission, called NASA ELaNa 20, carried ten cube sets of eight universities and one NASA center. The spacecraft is designed to perform a series of missions for scientific and technological demonstrations.
Despite flying payloads, Virgin Orbit stressed before the launch that the primary purpose of the flight was to test the vehicle. “It’s important to note that this is a test launch,” said Virgin Hart, president and CEO of Virgin Orbit, in a call to reporters. “Any early launch of a launch system carries a certain risk.”
‘We’ll be delighted to get the data and see the execution of the first phase and the second phase as it goes through their course. We are also aware that there is a risk that we will reach the final track, ”he added. “We work hard and look at all the details to make sure we have the best chance of getting around the track.”
Virgin Orbit’s first LauncherOne flight, in May 2020, failed seconds after the rocket’s NewtonThree engine ignited. An investigation determined that a liquid oxygen supply line had burst, causing the engine to shut down.
Hart said in the preliminary call that the company had brought in ‘an independent investigation’ from some of the best experts in the industry ‘, including former chief engineers of the Atlas and Delta launch vehicles. The Federal Aviation Administration, NASA and the US Air Force monitored the investigation, with support from The Aerospace Corporation.
After the cause was identified, Virgin Orbit performed a new structural analysis of the vehicle part and the adapted components to address the problem, followed by a test on a vibration table and static fire tests of the car. The company also conducted a similar investigation into NewtonFour, the engine in the second phase that did not get the chance to shoot in the previous launch attempt. “There were also some little mods we made there,” Hart said.
In the preliminary briefing, Virgin Orbit did not announce plans for their next launch, but Hart said the company is putting together the next LauncherOne rocket, which he described as “several weeks of readiness”. Several other vehicles in earlier stages of assembly. In the announcement after the launch, the company confirmed that it will enter commercial operations with their next launch, but did not announce a schedule or client for the next launch.
Hart said the company sees a diversified market for LauncherOne, with increasing interest from U.S. national security customers. “The market has changed a bit, where the movements that the government has made offer new opportunities there, and we are very focused on that,” he said. This is in addition to the demand from NASA and other countries’ space agencies and from developers of constellations of dozens of smallsats.
“We’re really positioned to drive a steady pace of launch,” Hart said.