Virgin Orbit’s 747 Cosmic Girl and rocket LauncherOne | Image: Virgin Orbit
Update May 25th, 4:05PM ET: Virgin Orbit’s test flight ended in failure shortly after LauncherOne dropped from under the company’s carrier 747 airplane. Virgin Orbit confirmed that the drop was successful, but that the mission “terminated shortly into the flight.” No further details have been provided yet, though the company says no one was hurt during the test.
Original Story: Small satellite launcher Virgin Orbit — the sibling company to Richard Branson’s space tourism venture Virgin Galactic — plans to conduct the first test launch of its rocket today. The company has been developing and testing its vehicles for the last six years, but now it’s ready to finally send a rocket to orbit.
Virgin Orbit’s primary rocket is called…
Small satellite launcher Virgin Orbit fails to launch rocket to space during first test flight
Source: New feed
