Virgin Orbit has kicked off commercial service with a successful LauncherOne mission on Wednesday, June 30.
As part of Virgin Orbit’s air-launch system, carrier aircraft Cosmic Girl took off from a flight runway at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California at 6:50 a.m. PDT. Cosmic Girl, a modified Boeing 747, dropped the rocket at 7:47 a.m. PDT, when it had reached about 45,000 feet in altitude.
LauncherOne separated cleanly and ignited its first stage engine, then completed stage separation. Satellites for the
U.S. Department of Defense (DoD),
SatRevolution and the
Royal Netherlands Air Force, were successfully deployed to 500 km Low-Earth Orbit (LEO).