Virgin Orbit

[PHXPhlyer]

Virgin Orbit launches rocket off a 747 aircraft, puts nine satellites in space

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/17/tech/vir ... index.html

Virgin Orbit launches rocket off a 747 aircraft, puts nine satellites in space
Jackie Wattles
By Jackie Wattles, CNN Business

Updated 5:50 PM ET, Sun January 17, 2021

Austin, Texas (CNN Business)A 70-foot rocket, riding beneath the wing of a retrofitted Boeing 747 aircraft, detached from the plane and fired itself into Earth's orbit on Sunday — marking the first successful launch for the California-based rocket startup Virgin Orbit.

Virgin Orbit's 747, nicknamed Cosmic Girl, took off from California around 10:30 am PT with the rocket, called LauncherOne, nestled beneath the plane's left wing. The aircraft flew out over the Pacific Ocean before the rocket was released, freeing LauncherOne and allowing it to power up its rocket motor and propel itself to more than 17,000 miles per hour, fast enough to begin orbiting the Earth.
"In both a literal and figurative sense, this is miles beyond how far we reached in our first Launch Demo," the company posted on its Twitter account.

The rocket flew a group of tiny satellites on behalf of NASA's Educational Launch of Nanosatellites, or ELaNa, program, which allows high school and college students to design and assemble small satellites that NASA then pays to launch into space. The nine small satellites that Virgin Orbit flew on Sunday included temperature-monitoring satellite from the University of Colorado at Boulder, a satellite that will study how tiny particles collide in space from the University of Central Florida, and an experimental radiation-detection satellite from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
About four hours after takeoff on Saturday, Virgin Orbit confirmed in a tweet that all the satellites were "successfully deployed into our target orbit."

The successful mission makes Virgin Orbit only the third so-called "New Space" company — startups hoping to overhaul the traditional industry with innovative technologies — to reach orbit, after SpaceX and Rocket Lab. The success also paves the way for Virgin Orbit to begin launching satellites for a host of customers that it already has lined up, including NASA, the military and private-sector companies that use satellites for commercial purposes.
Virgin Orbit spun off from Virgin Galactic, a company focused on suborbital human spaceflight, in 2017. Virgin Orbit conducted several "drop tests" of its LauncherOne rocket, which involved flying the vehicle out over the Pacific and letting it plunge into the ocean to vet the 747's release mechanism. Virgin Orbit's first attempt to put a rocket in orbit came last May, when LauncherOne malfunctioned shortly after release and the flight was aborted. That failure wasn't unexpected.
"Launching from the Earth to space is mind-bogglingly difficult," the company said after the 2020 launch attempt.
Virgin Orbit had expected to try a second orbital launch attempt in late 2020, but the company was forced to postpone after "a few" of its employees tested positive for Covid-19, according to an email from the company. That left many employees potentially exposed to the virus and under preventative quarantine, the company said.

"We're grateful and fortunate that most of our teammates have since cleared their preventative quarantines, allowing us to proceed with pre-launch operations," the company said on December 31, "albeit with even more extreme measures in place to protect the health and safety of our team."
Virgin Orbit, like other space technology companies in the United States, is permitted to continue operations throughout the pandemic because the government deemed the space sector part of the country's "critical infrastructure" in March. As one industry group argued, the sector's commercial activity is also intertwined with crucial US national security projects and NASA programs.

PP

[TheGreenGoblin]

Meanwhile in far off New Zealand...

The small-satellite launch company Rocket Lab called off its first launch of 2021 from New Zealand Saturday (Jan. 16) due to strange sensor readings ahead of liftoff.

A Rocket Lab Electron booster was scheduled to launch a microsatellite for the European space technology company OHB Group from New Zealand's Māhia Peninsula at 2:38 a.m. EST (8:38 p.m. New Zealand time; 0738 GMT), but unexpected data from an inclinometer on the booster prompted a delay.

"We had an inclinometer showing some strange data. It's not used for flight, but we want to understand it all the same," Rocket Lab representatives wrote in an update early Saturday. "That's part of the beauty of operating our own launch range, we have the luxury of time to roll back out when we're ready."

Rocket Lab has a 10-day window in which to launch its first flight of the year, called "Another One Leaves the Crust," from its Launch Complex 1 site. The mission will mark the 18th flight for Rocket Lab.

"We are standing down from today’s mission to review sensor data," the company added in another update. "Fortunately we have a 10-day window for this mission, so we have plenty of backup opportunities in the days to come.

The mission's microsatellite payload for OHB Group is designed to "enable specific frequencies to support future services from orbit," according to Rocket Lab. The flight was arranged by OHB Cosmos, the launch procurement arm for OHB Group.


Based in Long Beach, California, Rocket Lab launched eight Electron missions in 2020 and is seeking to ramp up its launch rate in 2021 with the addition of two new launch pads. Launch Complex 2 at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia, is expected to see its first liftoff later this year. Meanwhile, the company is building another pad near Launch Complex 1 to boost its launch capabilities from the Māhia Peninsula.

https://www.space.com/rocket-lab-anothe ... unch-delay

Rocket Lab

[Pontius Navigator]

Another One Leaves the Crust

As long as the other catch phrase is avoided.

[PHXPhlyer]

Virgin Orbit, Richard Branson's satellite launch company, to pause operations
The decision follows a tumultuous few months for the California-based company.

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/v ... -rcna75256

Virgin Orbit, the satellite launch company founded by the billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson, is pausing all operations and furloughing nearly all of its employees, in an attempt to shore up its finances.

Employees were notified Wednesday in an all-hands staff meeting, as was first reported by CNBC, but the company has not said how long the operational hold will last.

“Virgin Orbit is initiating a company-wide operational pause, effective March 16, 2023, and anticipates providing an update on go-forward operations in the coming weeks,” the company said in a statement provided to NBC News.

The decision follows a tumultuous few months for the California-based company. Virgin Orbit’s first attempt to launch satellites from the United Kingdom failed in January, and its rocket and nine onboard satellites were destroyed.

In a report filed Wednesday to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Virgin Orbit said the company-wide operational hold was put in place “in order to conserve capital while the Company conducts discussions with potential funding sources and explores strategic opportunities.”

The news sent the company’s shares tumbling 18.8% in extended trading Wednesday, according to Reuters.

Virgin Orbit was founded in 2017 with the aim to launch small satellites into orbit. The company uses a modified 747 passenger jet to carry and then release its LauncherOne rocket from an altitude of around 35,000 feet.

Virgin Orbit officials have said that this system of launching from the air gives the company more flexibility over competitors whose rockets lift off from launch pads on the ground.

The company’s failure in January was a major setback. The mission was a collaboration between Virgin Orbit, the U.K. Space Agency, the Royal Air Force and the Cornwall Council, and marked the aerospace firm’s first international launch attempt.

A subsequent investigation found that an engine in the rocket’s upper stage malfunctioned, causing it to shut down prematurely.

“In space launch, a failure is painful for all involved,” Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart said in a statement Feb. 14. “Intense disappointment gets quickly channeled into the motivation to dig into the cause, to understand all contributing elements and to thereby get back to flight with a better system and a wiser team. Our investigation is not yet complete; the team is hard at work and we’ll pursue the cause and contributors to wherever the system analysis takes us.”

Prior to the U.K. outing, Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket successfully reached orbit four times on missions launched from California’s Mojave Air and Space Port.

In a statement, Virgin Orbit said its next rocket, for an upcoming launch from California, is in the “final stages of integration and test,” but the company has not released any further details on the timing of that mission.

PP

[Woody]

File alongside Virgin Media,Trains,Vodka etc

[G-CPTN]

Virgin Obit?

You forgot something Mate(s).

Skyns are to be packed in fours.

[PHXPhlyer]

Virgin Orbit fails to secure funding, will cease operations
Virgin Orbit stock closed at 34 cents a share on Thursday, having fallen 82% since the beginning of the year.

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/v ... -rcna77507

Virgin Orbit is ceasing operations “for the foreseeable future” after failing to secure a funding lifeline, CEO Dan Hart told employees during an all-hands meeting on Thursday afternoon, and will layoff about 90% of its workforce.

“Unfortunately we’ve not been able to secure the funding to provide a clear path for this company,” Hart said, according to audio of the 5 p.m. ET meeting obtained by CNBC.

Hart has been giving the company’s employees brief daily updates since Monday, when Virgin Orbit last minute delayed a scheduled all-hands meeting to Thursday. Late-stage deal talks had fallen through with a pair of investors over the weekend, but Hart told staff on Monday that “very dynamic” investment discussions were continuing.

Those investor discussions continued this week — with Hart saying leadership would share any updates “as quickly and transparently as we can,” noting that leaking emails “is against company policy,” according to copies of Hart’s emails from Tuesday and Wednesday obtained by CNBC.

The company this week has steadily been bringing back more of its over 750 employees from the operational pause and furlough it began on Mar. 15, after initially resuming some work with a “small team” on Mar. 22. Amid the broader pause, Virgin Orbit has been working to finish its investigation into the mid-flight failure of its previous launch, as well as finish preparations on its next rocket.

A Virgin Orbit representative did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Virgin Orbit stock closed at 34 cents a share on Thursday, having fallen 82% since the beginning of the year.

Virgin Orbit developed a system that uses a modified 747 jet to send satellites into space by dropping a rocket from under the aircraft’s wing mid-flight. But the company’s last mission suffered a mid-flight failure, with an issue during the launch causing the rocket to not reach orbit and crash into the ocean.

The company has been looking for new funds for several months, with majority owner Sir Richard Branson unwilling to fund the company further.

Virgin Orbit was spun out of Branson’s Virgin Galactic in 2017 and counts the billionaire as its largest stakeholder, with 75% ownership. Mubadala, the Emirati sovereign wealth fund, holds the second-largest stake in Virgin Orbit, at 18%.

The company hired bankruptcy firms to draw up contingency plans in the event it is unable to find a buyer or investor. Branson has first priority over Virgin Orbit’s assets, as the company raised $60 million in debt from the investment arm of Virgin Group.

On the same day that Hart told employees that Virgin Orbit was pausing operations, its board of directors approved a “golden parachute” severance plan for top executives, in case they are terminated “following a change in control” of the company.

PP