LauncherOne

LauncherOne
Type:	light launcher
Country:	United States
Start-up costs:	10 to 12 million US dollars
construction
Height:	approx. 16 m
Stages:	2
stages
1st stage :
Engine :	NewtonThree
Fuel :	Kerosene and LOX
Burn time:	approx. 180 s
2nd stage :
Engine:	NewtonFour
Fuel:	Kerosene and LOX
Burn time:	approx. 360 s
Starts
Status:	in the development
Starting place:	Carrier aircraft "Cosmic Girl"
Starting capacity
Capacity LEO :	500 kg (230 km altitude)
Capacity SSO :	300 kg (500 km altitude)

LauncherOne is a two- to three-stage airborne launch vehicle being developed by Virgin Orbit . It is designed for the launch of small satellites . Originally, the White Knight Two was supposed to be used as a carrier aircraft before switching to a Boeing 747-400 nicknamed Cosmic Girl . A first attempt to start took place almost two years later on May 25, 2020 and failed.

Development history

Already in 2008, was Virgin Galactic - a company of Virgin Group of Richard Branson - in talks with British satellite manufacturer Surrey Satellite Technology to develop a "low-cost" carrier rocket for small satellites. However, there was no collaboration.

LauncherOne was officially unveiled by Virgin Galactic at Farnborough International Airshow on July 11, 2012 . The project headquarters have been in Long Beach (California) since February 2015 .

In March 2017, the development and marketing of LauncherOne was transferred to the newly founded Virgin subsidiary Virgin Orbit . VOX Space was founded as a wholly owned subsidiary of Virgin Orbit for marketing to the US government and its allies .

construction

LauncherOne is a small, basic two-stage launcher that uses kerosene (RP-1) and liquid oxygen as fuel . The NewtonThree engine delivers 327 kN of thrust for the first stage. The second stage is powered by the NewtonFour engine.

The two-stage LauncherOne is expected to be dropped from a B747-400 at approximately 35,000 ft (10,700 m) altitude. The B747-400 was previously used by Virgin Atlantic and is called Cosmic Girl .

A third stage is planned for interplanetary missions.

commitment

LauncherOne is said to be able to place payloads with a mass of up to 500 kg in low earth orbit, and up to 300 kg in sun-synchronous orbit. The price for a start is said to be around $ 12 million.

At the launch of the LauncherOne in 2012, Virgin Galactic announced that orders from Skybox Imaging (Skysat satellites), GeoOptics , Spaceflight and Planetary Resources had already been received for a planned launch from 2016 . Skysat satellites started in 2016 with the Vega , Minotaur-C and Falcon 9 rockets and GeoOptics satellites launched in 2018 with PSLV, among others . In April 2019, Virgin Orbit qualified for participation in the DARPA Launch Challenge rocket launch competition , but withdrew from the competition six months later due to major delays in the development of the LauncherOne.

LauncherOne launches for the Royal Air Force are planned for the end of 2020 at the earliest .

Starting locations

Mojave Air & Spaceport in California is primarily intended for the take-offs of the Boeing 747-400 Cosmic Girl . Further launches are planned from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida , from Newquay Cornwall Airport in England and from the International Airport and Andersen Air Force Base in Guam .

Start list

As of May 25, 2020

The time the rocket was launched from the aircraft is given as the start time.

Performed starts

Date ( UTC )	Launch site	Mission / payload	Mass ( kg ) 1	Orbit 2	Remarks
May 25, 2020 7:50 PM	MASP	Mass simulator		LEO	Failure test flight; the first stage engine burned only for a few seconds.

Planned launches

The dates were published before the failed first flight. There may be shifts due to the necessary troubleshooting and troubleshooting.

Date ( UTC )	Launch site	Mission / payload	Mass ( kg ) 1	Orbit 2	Remarks
?	MASP	Test flight
?	MASP	Elana 20 (research and amateur radio cubesats ): Cactus-1, Cape-3, Exocube, Inca, MiTEE, Pics, PolarCube, Q-Pace, RadFXSat-2, TechEdSat-7	40	500 km
2nd half of 2020		μHETsat (technology testing)	<80	LEO	Along with other payloads?
4th quarter 2020 at the earliest	AFB Guam	Elana 29 : PAN (two technology testing satellites)	approx. 10	LEO	Along with other payloads?
October 2021 at the earliest		STP -S28 44 technology testing satellites		LEO	spread over three starts
				LEO
				LEO
no earlier than 2021	KSC	STP -27VP (approx. 10 experimental satellites): MiniCarb, PAN A, PAN B, ...		500 km
no earlier than 2021		Starling (8 tracking satellites)		LEO	8 of 80 planned Starling satellites
no earlier than 2021		Pearl 3U (16 communication satellites each )		LEO	multiple starts
	Guam	Ignis (technology testing)	11-12	500 km	Along with other payloads?

¹Take-off mass of the payload including carried fuel ( wet mass ).

²Track height at which the payload is to be suspended; not necessarily the target orbit of the payload.

Web links

• Virgin Galactic: LauncherOne Performance (English)
• Gunter's Space Page: LauncherOne (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jonathan Amos: Plans for UK satellite launcher. BBC, February 3, 2009, accessed August 4, 2015 . 
2. ^ Rob Coppinger: Virgin Galactic slows satellite launcher plans. BBC, October 2, 2010, accessed on August 4, 2015 (English): "But SSTL backed out after attempts to raise some feasibility funding from the then British National Space Center (now the UK Space Agency) did not succeed." 
3. ↑ Stephen Clark: Virgin Galactic takes on satellite launch market. Spaceflight Now, July 11, 2012, accessed August 4, 2015 . 
4. ^ Steve Dent: Virgin Galactic reveals where it'll build its satellite-launching rockets. February 13, 2015, accessed August 4, 2015 . 
5. ↑ We Are Virgin Orbit. In: virginorbit.com. Virgin Orbit LLC, accessed August 1, 2018 (American English). 
6. ↑ Daniel AJ Sokolov: Virgin Galactic subsidiary VOX Space is to launch military satellites. In: Heise Online. November 20, 2017, accessed on August 1, 2018 (German). 
7. ^ Virgin Galactic: We're building rockets that will launch the small satellite revolution. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on August 5, 2015 ; accessed on August 4, 2015 . 
8. ↑ ^{a b} LauncherOne Service Guide. (No longer available online.) In: virginorbit.com. Virgin Orbit LLC, August 2017, archived from the original on March 28, 2018 ; accessed on June 1, 2018 (English). 
9. ^ Virgin Galactic: LauncherOne Operations. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on December 8, 2015 ; accessed on December 4, 2015 . 
10. ^ Virgin Galactic: LauncherOne Program to use dedicated 747-400 aircraft to responsively air-launch small satellite customer payloads. (No longer available online.) December 3, 2015, archived from the original on December 6, 2015 ; accessed on December 4, 2015 . 
11. ↑ Virgin Orbit to add extra rocket stage to LauncherOne for interplanetary missions . Spacenews, October 24, 2019.
12. ↑ Virgin Orbit plans 2018 first launch - SpaceNews.com . In: SpaceNews.com . August 2, 2017 ( spacenews.com [accessed June 1, 2018]).
13. ^ Jeff Foust: Virgin Galactic relaunches its smallsat launch business. In: Newspace Journal. July 11, 2012, accessed March 17, 2019 . 
14. ↑ Stephen Clark: Vega rocket hauls up quintet of Earth observation satellites. In: Spaceflight Now. September 16, 2016, accessed March 17, 2019 . 
15. ^ William Graham: Orbital ATK Minotaur-C launches SkySat mission out of Vandenberg. In: Nasaspaceflight. October 31, 2017, accessed March 17, 2019 . 
16. ↑ Mike Safyan: Two SkySat Satellites, Three Doves, and a Record-Breaking Launch on Spaceflight's SSO-A. Planet Labs, October 22, 2018, accessed March 17, 2019 . 
17. ↑ On-board camera replay of PSLV's deployment of 31 smallsats. In: Spaceflight Now. November 30, 2018, accessed March 17, 2019 . 
18. ↑ Caleb Henry: Stealth startup lone remaining contender in DARPA responsive launch challenge . Spacenews, October 23, 2019.
19. ^ Thomas Burkhardt: Virgin Orbit Partners with Royal Air Force for Responsive Launch Capability. In: Nasaspaceflight.com. July 19, 2019. Retrieved July 19, 2019 . 
20. ↑ Satellites are also to be launched into space from the Cornwall spaceport. In: Golem.de . Retrieved September 5, 2019 . 
21. ↑ Guam selected as Virgin Orbit LauncherOne spaceport. In: Pacific Daily News. April 11, 2019, accessed September 5, 2019 . 
22. ^ Jeff Foust: Virgin Orbit first launch attempt fails . Spacenews, May 25, 2020.
23. ^ Mission Recap: Our first launch demo . Virgin Orbit, May 27, 2020.
24. ↑ ^{a b} Upcoming ELaNa CubeSat Launches. NASA, accessed May 23, 2020 . 
25. ↑ Cira: Completari i test sul pannello solare del μHETSat die sitael . Spazionews, March 26, 2020.
26. ↑ ^{a b c d} Twitter message from Jeff Foust, Spacenews, May 23, 2020.
27. ↑ Sandra Erwin: Virgin Orbit's VOX Space wins $ 35 million US Space Force launch contract . Spacenews, April 10, 2020.
28. ↑ Lee Kanayama: LauncherOne wins three dedicated national security smallsat missions . Nasaspaceflight.com, April 10, 2020.
29. ^ Iridium Satellite LLC : Request for Experimental Authority. (PDF) In: OET Experimental Licensing System. Federal Communications Commission , February 7, 2019, accessed March 19, 2019 . 
30. ↑ Stephen Clark: Virgin Orbit nears first test flights with air-launched rocket. In: Spaceflight Now. August 31, 2018, accessed March 17, 2019 . 
31. ↑ LauncherOne Overview. (PDF) In: sprsa.org. Virgin Orbit and Vox Space, June 2018, accessed March 19, 2019 . 
32. ↑ Caleb Hebry: GomSpace taps Virgin Orbit to launch nanosatellites for tracking ships and planes. In: Spacenews. January 16, 2018, accessed March 17, 2019 . 
33. ↑ Stephen Kuper: 'The Model T Ford of satellites': Meir Moalem, Sky and Space Global. In: Space Connect. January 29, 2019, accessed March 17, 2019 . 
34. ↑ Astro Digital Ignis ODAR - Version 1.0. (PDF) In: fcc.gov. Astro Digital, April 19, 2019, accessed April 21, 2019 .