Virgin Orbit Rocket Reaches Earth Orbit in Commercial Space Race
Article by Christian Davenport January 17, 2021 (washingtonpost.com)
• On January 17th, Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit achieved the first successful trip into space of its ‘LauncherOne’ rocket (pictured above), a test flight over the Pacific Ocean that marks the introduction of a new method for low-cost satellite launches and the likely shake-up of the aerospace industry. “According to telemetry, LauncherOne has reached orbit!” the company tweeted at about 2:50 pm Eastern. “Everyone on the team who is not in mission control right now is going absolutely bonkers.”
• The flight marked a triumph for the British billionaire who now has two companies that have reached space successfully with two different vehicles. Said Branson, “This magnificent flight is the culmination of many years of hard work and will also unleash a whole new generation of innovators on the path to orbit.”
• The company hopes to be a disruptive force in the launch market by offering a small, 70-foot long, two-stage rocket suited to take advantage of a revolution in satellite technology that is shrinking their size and lowering their costs. LauncherOne would be able to hoist payloads of satellites ranging “from the size of a very big refrigerator to the size of a toaster oven,” said Will Pomerantz, Virgin Orbit’s vice president of special projects.
• Instead of launching vertically from a pad on the ground, the LauncherOne is tethered under the wing of a modified 747, which carries the rocket to an altitude of about 35,000 feet when the rocket is released, fires its engine, and heads into space. The “air launch” technique means the rocket is already above much of the Earth’s atmosphere and traveling just under Mach 1, or the speed of sound. Instead of requiring a lot of ground infrastructure, the company can be flexible, essentially taking off from any runway that can accommodate a 747.
• A test flight of the LauncherOne on Memorial Day in 2020 failed due to a technical malfunction. Dan Hart, Virgin Orbit’s president and CEO, said that the company had fixed the problem and has done “an enormous amount of testing since then”.
• Sunday’s mission carried ten satellites into orbit, in cooperation with a NASA program that allows universities and others to launch small satellites for Earth observation, weather prediction and other science and research projects. The company confirmed that all the satellites “successfully deployed into our target orbit.”
• Virgin Orbit is entering a crowded market of companies that want to capitalize on launching small satellites. Rocket Lab, a company that launches from New Zealand, has already sent several payloads into orbit for commercial and government customers. Rocket Lab plans to soon begin launches from Wallops Island on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. The companies are following in the footsteps of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which upended the launch market by offering discount launch prices with its reusable Falcon 9 rocket.
• Virgin Orbit said it thinks the market for small satellites will grow. Ultimately, it hopes to expand its business to include commercial companies as well as satellites for the Space Force and US intelligence agencies that need to be able to respond rapidly to potential threats. After the launch, Space Force’s chief of space operations Gen. Jay Raymond Tweeted: “Congratulations to the Virgin Orbit Team!”
• Virgin Orbit is the sister company of Branson’s Virgin Galactic, a venture that vows to become the “world’s first commercial spaceline” by flying tourists to the edge of space and back. It has twice flown people on suborbital trips to the edge of space and is gearing up to fly paying passengers as soon as this year.
Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit flew a rocket into orbit on Sunday in a test flight that marks the introduction of a new method for low-cost
satellite launches and the likely shake-up of the aerospace industry.
The flight was the company’s first successful trip into space, launching a small rocket from the wing of a 747 airplane flying over the Pacific Ocean. And it marked a triumph for Branson, the starry-eyed British billionaire who now has two companies that have reached space successfully with two different vehicles.
In tweets, the company chronicled the flight of its LauncherOne rocket, celebrating each milestone, from engine ignition to second-stage separation. “According to telemetry, LauncherOne has reached orbit!” the company tweeted at about 2:50 p.m. Eastern. “Everyone on the team who is not in mission control right now is going absolutely bonkers.”
In a statement, Branson said, “this magnificent flight is the culmination of many years of hard work and will also unleash a whole new generation of innovators on the path to orbit.”
The company hopes to be a disruptive force in the launch market by offering a small, 70-foot long, two-stage rocket suited to take advantage of a revolution in satellite technology that is shrinking their size and lowering their costs. LauncherOne would be able to hoist payloads of up to a few hundred pounds — satellites that would range “from the size of a very big refrigerator to the size of a toaster oven,” Will Pomerantz, Virgin Orbit’s vice president of special projects, said in a call with reporters before the test flight.
Instead of launching vertically from a pad on the ground, the company tethers LauncherOne under the wing of a modified 747,
which carries the rocket to an altitude of about 35,000 feet. The rocket is then released, fires its engine and heads into space.
The “air launch” technique means the rocket is already above much of the atmosphere and traveling just under Mach 1, or the speed of sound, when it fires its engines. And instead of requiring a lot of ground infrastructure, the company can be flexible, essentially taking off from any runway that can accommodate a 747.
The company attempted its first launch on Memorial Day last year. The rocket dropped, but its engine cut off shortly after ignition. After an investigation, the company said there was a “breach in the high-pressure line” that carried liquid oxygen to the first-stage combustion chamber. Without the oxidizer, “that engine soon stopped providing thrust, ending our powered flight and ultimately the test itself.”
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