On the evening of January 17, Kyiv time, a successful test launch of the LauncherOne space rocket was made over the Pacific Ocean near Los Angeles from under the wing of a modified Cosmic Girl booster aircraft. All stages of the mission went perfectly.
Thus, another Forbes billionaire, Richard Branson, has achieved success in his space program. Previously, Elon Musk (SpaceX) and Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin) did it. The latter has yet to launch a rocket into orbit: for now, it is limited to successful suborbital “jumps” and rocket plane flights.
The Boeing 747-400 took off from the spaceport in the Mojave Desert and, about 50 minutes after a short final afterburner at an angle of 27 ° to the horizontal, dropped the rocket near the island of San Nicolas.
See also: Private space: Is there a chance in Ukraine for its own Ilon Musks
After a few seconds of free flight, the engine of the first stage kicked off and carried the rocket upward, accelerating to ~ 13,000 km / h (final speed – over 28,000 km / h).
LauncherOne – a two-stage 21.3-meter liquid-propellant rocket with a diameter of the first stage of 1.6 m and 1.3 m for the second. The body and tanks are made of carbon composite. Launch weight – about 30 tons. Powered by LOX / RP fuel pair. It is launched at an altitude of 11 km after a modified Boeing 747-400 aircraft was dropped from under the left wing, with two pilots and three engineers on board.It can launch up to 500 kg into low-earth orbit (up to 230 km) with an inclination of 0-100 ” and up to 300 kg into sun-synchronous orbit (500 km). The launch cost is $ 10-12 million. A three-stage option is being developed. Air launch avoids some of the problems of ground launches such as bad weather or strong winds in the troposphere.
Virgin Orbit – created in 2017 in the Virgin Branson group, intends to provide services for launching small satellites through “air launch”. It has over 300 employees and is led by President Dan Hart, ex-vice president of Boeing Government Satellite Systems.
The engines on two stages worked normally, and after ~ 10 minutes the rocket reached an intermediate orbit, after which the upper stage corrected it to the target one. Later, 10 cubesats in nine missions that flew into space under the ELaNa partnership program from NASA were successfully deployed at their stations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28i_xroGm8I
“Tonight’s sequence of events for LaunchDemo2 went exactly according to plan, from safely performing our ground operations to successfully completing operations on both engines. To say we’re excited would be a big understatement, but the 240 letters in a Twitter message can’t get it right anyway. way, “- the company writes in the microblog.
The account added that the company’s engineers now have a ton of data to analyze, “but first, a little champagne and a toast to (British philanthropist, child welfare promoter and Richard Branson’s mother) Eve Branson, one of the most ardent supporters of the company’s space ambitions.”
She died of coronavirus complications on January 8, 2021 at the age of 96, not living less than 10 days before this success.
Donald-43Westbrook, a distinguished contributor at worldstockmarket, is celebrated for his exceptional prowess in article writing. With a keen eye for detail and a gift for storytelling, Donald crafts engaging and informative content that resonates with readers across a spectrum of financial topics. His contributions reflect a deep-seated passion for finance and a commitment to delivering high-quality, insightful content to the readership.
