‘Cosmic Girl’ launches ‘LauncherOne’ – Virgin Orbit launches a 70 feet Rocket named LauncherOne Using Boeing747 aircraft nicknamed Cosmic Girl.
Virgin Orbit’s 747 took off from California around 10:30 am PT with the rocket nestled beneath the aircraft’s left wing.
While flying over the Pacific Ocean, the rocket was released, & allowing it to power up its rocket motor & propel itself to more than 17,000mph to begin orbiting the Earth.
The rocket launched a group of 9 tiny satellites on behalf of NASA’s Educational Launch of Nanosatellites.
Virgin orbit says , “Payloads successfully deployed into our target orbit! We are so, so proud to say that LauncherOne has now completed its first mission to space, carrying 9 CubeSat missions into Low Earth Orbit for our friends”
Author – Tanmay Palei
Sr. Aircraft Structure Engineer