LauncherOne - Virgin Galactic's satellite launching rocket

[tnt22]

https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/05/21/virgin-orbit-schedules-its-first-orbital-test-launch-for-this-weekend/

Virgin Orbit schedules its first orbital test launch this weekend
May 21, 2020 | Stephen Clark


A full-scale mock-up of Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne rocket falls away from a modified Boeing 747 carrier jet during an inert drop test in July 2019 over the Mojave Desert of California. Credit: Virgin Orbit

The first orbital test flight of Virgin Orbit's privately-developed air-launched rocket is scheduled as soon as Sunday off the coast of Southern California, the company said Wednesday.

Designed to deliver small satellites into orbit, the LauncherOne vehicle has a four-hour window Sunday opening at 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. EDT; 1700 GMT) to head into space after release from the belly of Virgin Orbit's Boeing 747 carrier aircraft. A backup launch opportunity is available at the same time Monday.

"We will only proceed with the mission if all conditions for launch are nominal," Virgin Orbit said in a press kit for the demonstration flight. "Although air-launched systems like ours are less vulnerable to bad weather than fixed ground-launch systems, we'll be watching the weather closely and being cautious for this maiden flight."

Virgin Orbit announced the target launch date Wednesday as the company nears the final phase of an eight-year development effort that began as a spinoff of sister company Virgin Galactic, which focuses on the suborbital space tourism market.

Both companies are part of Richard Branson's Virgin Group. The LauncherOne vehicle aims to become the first liquid-fueled air-launched rocket to reach orbit.

Virgin Galactic says it first studied the LauncherOne concept in 2007, and development began in earnest in 2012. Engineers in 2015 scrapped initial plans to drop the rocket from Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft, and kicked off development of a redesigned system using a 747 jumbo jet taken from Virgin Atlantic's commercial airline fleet.

Headquartered in Long Beach, California, Virgin Orbit was established in 2017 as a spinoff of Virgin Galactic.

"This Launch Demo marks the apex of a five-year-long development program," Virgin Orbit said in a statement. "On our journey to open up space for everyone, we've conducted hundreds of hotfires of our engines and our rocket stages, performed two dozen test flights with our carrier aircraft, and conducted countless other tests of every bit of the system we could test on the ground."

In the last six weeks, Virgin Orbit completed a captive carry test of the LauncherOne rocket. Teams filled the vehicle with kerosene fuel and cryogenic liquid nitrogen, a stand-in for liquid oxygen used as an oxidizer during a real launch, and the 747 carrier aircraft — named "Cosmic Girl" — took off from Virgin Orbit's flight operations base at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California.

Virgin Orbit exercised propellant loading, takeoff, tracking and telemetry, and return-to-base procedures during the captive carry test April 12. The company completed additional rehearsals on the ground in recent weeks, practicing filling and draining the rocket's supply of kerosene and liquid oxygen.

Now the rocket is ready to fly, Virgin Orbit said this week.


Virgin Orbit's rocket carrier aircraft sits near the runway at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, where teams will fill the LauncherOne vehicle with liquid propellants before takeoff. Credit: Virgin Orbit

Dan Hart, Virgin Orbit's CEO, told Spaceflight Now last month the LauncherOne's first flight will carry some "test payloads" the company developed. He said Virgin Orbit will release details about the payloads on the inaugural launch at a later time.

Hart characterized the first flight as "an engineering test."

"Of course, we would love it to get to orbit," Hart told Spaceflight Now. "The more of the system that we can exercise, the more confidence that we'll have for the next flight. We do know, and we're mindful, that a first flight is not without risk."

"We're mindful of the fact that for the governments and companies who have preceded us in developing spaceflight systems, maiden flights have statistically ended in failure about half of the time," Virgin Orbit said in a statement Wednesday.

"In the future, the goal of our launches will be to deploy satellites for a new generation of space-based services," the company said. "For this Launch Demo, though, our goal is to safely learn as much as possible and prove out the LauncherOne system we've worked so hard to design, build, test and operate."

Piloted by Kelly Latimer, Virgin Orbit's chief test pilot, the 747 carrier aircraft will line up for its launch run west of San Nicolas Island, which is owned by the U.S. Navy. The targeted drop point is located roughly 100 miles (160 kilometers) west-southwest of Long Beach.

Latimer will command the airplane onto climb angle of more than 25 degrees. The nearly 30-ton rocket will be released from a pylon under the 747's left wing during the pull-up maneuver at an altitude of around 35,000 feet (nearly 10,700 meters).

Around five seconds after release, the rocket's kerosene-fueled NewtonThree engine will ignite with 73,500 pounds of thrust to begin climbing into orbit.

"The instant our NewtonThree engine ignites, we will have done something no one has ever done before — lighting an orbital-class, liquid-fueled, horizontally-launched vehicle in flight," Virgin Orbit said.

"We'll continue the mission for as long as we can," the company said. "The longer LauncherOne flies, the more data we'll be able to collect. Should we defy the historical odds and become one of those exceedingly rare teams to complete a mission on first attempt, we will deploy a test payload into an orbit, take our data, and then quickly de-orbit so as not to clutter the heavens."

If everything goes as Virgin Orbit hopes, the company intends to restart the second stage's NewtonFour engine once in space, validating the rocket's ability to deliver payloads to different orbits on the same mission.

The mission profile for the first LauncherOne flight lasts 32 minutes from the time of the rocket's release from the "Cosmic Girl" jumbo jet until separation of its payload in orbit.


After takeoff from Mojave, the "Cosmic Girl" carrier jet will fly to the west, then south over the Channel Islands off the coast of Southern California. Once over the Pacific Ocean, the aircraft will fly in a racetrack pattern before lining up on the rocket's southeasterly flight path. Release of the rocket is expected about 50 minutes after takeoff from Mojave. Credit: Virgin Orbit

The 70-foot-long (21-meter) LauncherOne rocket is designed to compete with other commercial smallsat launchers, such as Rocket Lab's Electron booster, for contracts to deliver CubeSats and microsatellites to orbit for commercial customers, the U.S. military and NASA. Virgin Orbit says it can haul up to 660 pounds (300 kilograms) of cargo into a 310-mile-high (500-kilometer) polar sun-synchronous orbit, a standard operating orbit for Earth-imaging satellites.

A dedicated launch by Virgin Orbit sells for around $12 million.

Hart said last month that Virgin Orbit plans to have a chase plane for the launch, and video cameras are mounted on the aircraft and the the LauncherOne vehicle itself to capture the rocket's release from the carrier jet, first stage ignition and climb into space.

But the company does not plan to provide a live public webcast for the LauncherOne demonstration flight. Instead, Virgin Orbit will release updates on Twitter as the mission progresses.

[Василий Ратников]

A dedicated launch by Virgin Orbit sells for around $12 million.
300 kilograms of cargo into a 500-kilometer

а смысл ? очень редко есть заказчик с микроспутником которому прям срочно надо 300 кг и который готов платить много

обычно те у кого мелкие спутники у них одновременно денег нет.
соответственно им надо идти к РокетЛаб и покупать выделенный запуск дешевле.
или идти на попутку к СпейсХ еще дешевле.

хорошо бы ошибиться, ибо пусть цветут тысячу цветов, но выглядит как мертворожденный проект.

[Димитър]

Запускают сегодня?

[Air]

Сделал инфографику к запуску

[tnt22]

Тема по демо-пуску пока здесь... (без вопросов а почему, сам знаю   ) - Dummy pld - LauncherOne (Demo) - Mojave, Boeing 747 - 24.05.2020 17:00-21:00 UTC

[tnt22]

Virgin Orbit @Virgin_Orbit 4 ч. назад

We completed fueling of our LauncherOne rocket yesterday for our Launch Demo. Everything has been proceeding smoothly: team, aircraft, & rocket are in excellent shape. However, we have one sensor that is acting up. Out of an abundance of caution, we are offloading fuel to address


4 ч. назад

This means we are scrubbed for today. Currently, it appears we've got a straightforward path to address this minor sensor issue and recycle quickly. The crew are already hard at work putting that plan into action. We'll provide an update on the new launch target later today.

[tnt22]

 Virgin Orbit @Virgin_Orbit 26 мин. назад

The way that we support and launch our rocket is quite different from vertically launched platforms, so here's a handy guide to the various trailers that make up our mobile ground support equipment.

(2:00)

[DiZed]

https://nplus1.ru/news/2020/05/25/launcherone-mission-one

"После сброса с самолета Virgin Orbit заявила в Twitter, что ракета закончила полет вскоре после запуска, но самолет с экипажем находятся в безопасности и возвращаются на аэродром."

https://twitter.com/Virgin_Orbit/status/1265008105714155520
"We've confirmed a clean release from the aircraft. However, the mission terminated shortly into the flight. Cosmic Girl and our flight crew are safe and returning to base."

[tnt22]

Virgin Orbit @Virgin_Orbit 7 мин. назад

In this first launch demo, we successfully completed all of our pre-launch procedures, captive carry flight out to the drop site, clean telemetry lock from multiple dishes, a smooth pass through the racetrack, terminal count, and a clean release from the aircraft.


7 мин. назад

LauncherOne maintained stability after release, and we ignited our first stage engine, NewtonThree. An anomaly then occurred early in first stage flight. We'll learn more as our engineers analyze the mountain of data we collected today.


6 мин. назад

As we said before the flight, our goals today were to work through the process of conducting a launch, learn as much as we could, and achieve ignition. We hoped we could have done more, but we accomplished those key objectives today.


6 мин. назад

The team's already hard at work digging into the data, and we're eager to hop into our next big test ASAP. Thankfully, instead of waiting until after our 1st flight to tackle our 2nd rocket, we've already completed a ton of work to get us back in the air and keep moving forward.

[tnt22]

 Virgin Orbit @Virgin_Orbit 6 мин. назад

Here's our next rocket, built and ready for system-level testing in our final integration area as it waits for its turn to fly to space.

[Старый]

https://nplus1.ru/news/2020/05/25/launcherone-mission-one

"После сброса с самолета Virgin Orbit заявила в Twitter, что ракета закончила полет вскоре после запуска, но самолет с экипажем находятся в безопасности и возвращаются на аэродром."

Может кто-нибудь внятно объяснить как ракета "закончила полёт" то? Взорвалась? Упала в океан? Связь оборвалась и хрен знает где она?

[napalm]

Ох уж эта "аномалия". Похлеще ТЗЧ в последнее время.

[Alex_II]

Может кто-нибудь внятно объяснить как ракета "закончила полёт" то?

Внятное объяснение по ходу не влезло в формат Твиттера... Подождем маленько...

[The Heart of the Moon]

ракета закончила полет вскоре после запуска

  Ракета отлеталась 

[anik]

Virgin Orbit выложила видео аварийного пуска. Двигатель первой ступени проработал 4 секунды и вырубился. Никаких взрыва и ликвидации ракеты не было.

https://twitter.com/virgin_orbit/status/1265500317032034305

[Schwalbe]

Кислород выкипел?

[Старый]

О причинах погасания двигателя зрителям предлагается догадаться самим.

[Старый]

Стало быть ракета так тушкой и булькнула в воду? Интересно бы было на это посмотреть.

[Старый]

А на видеоролике то момента выключения двигателя нет. Так что вопрос "Откуда взялись дебрисс которые углядели ребята с локатором?" остаётся открытым...

[tnt22]

Mission Recap: Launch Demo

 Virgin Orbit

26 мая 2020 г.

Mission Recap: Launch Demo

We said the main product of this flight would be data, and wow, did we get a lot of it! After diving into our early analyses, we wanted to share more about the flight — including both the many things that went well and what we know about the areas where we'll need to improve.

Check out our newest blog post for a more thorough recap of the flight, and to see where we're headed next as a team more excited than ever about the utility of our launch system.

youtu.be/CNJib8lJY1E

(1:58)