A jet flying off the California coast released a Virgin Orbit rocket that carried seven small satellites into space on Thursday.
Virgin Orbit’s modified Boeing 747 took off from Mojave Air & Space Port in the Southern California desert, flew out over the Pacific Ocean and dropped the LauncherOne rocket from its left wing.
The 70-foot-long (21.3-meter) booster ignited at an altitude of about 35,000 feet (10,668 meters) and hurtled skyward. It was later confirmed by the company that all of the satellites were successfully deployed into the proper orbit.
RAF test pilot Mathew “Stanny” Stannard flew the 747 from the main pilot seat on Thursday.
“Another fantastic day for the Virgin Orbit team, and a big step forward for our customers,” the company tweeted.
The payload included satellites for the U.S. Defense Department, the Polish company SatRevolution and the international company Spire Global.
“This is going to be just a banner year for us,” Chief Operating Officer Tony Gingiss said in a preflight briefing this week.
Gingiss said there has been continuous improvement flight-over-flight.
“I think we’re seeing not only the kind of rigor we expect but just really getting highly confident in our processes,” he said.
It was Virgin Orbit’s third launch carrying satellites for customers, with two previous launches carrying multiple satellites into orbit in January and June 2021. The company’s first launch, a demonstration flight, failed in May 2020.
Virgin Orbit, founded in 2017 by British billionaire Richard Branson and that went public last month, is targeting the market for launching small satellites.
“The tremendous thing about using a 747 is we can put them into any orbit from anywhere in the world,” Branson said from the British Virgin Islands during the company’s launch webcast.
“There’s only I think a couple of handfuls of countries in the world that have the capability of sending satellites to space from their own countries and now 480 countries can use Virgin Orbit,” he said. “You just need to ring us up.”
Virgin Orbit, this year, plans to ramp up the pace of launches, including two originating from Britain. It is planning for six launches this year, including two for the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force that will originate from Cornwall in southwestern England.
