Tubular Bells, Part 1

Meet the Tubular Bells, Part 1 mission: the third flight of Virgin Orbit’s air-launched LauncherOne rocket and the company’s first mission to receive a name.

The mission marks the first operational flight of LauncherOne after two Demo flights in May 2020 and January 2021.

A total of 7 satellites weighing less than 500 kg total will be taken to low Earth orbit on the flight.

The satellites come from two military agencies and one private company from three nations, the United States, the Netherlands, and Poland.

The satellites include:

• three CubeSat sets from the US Department of Defense’s Space Test Program’s Rapid Agile Launch Initiative. This portion of the mission is also known as STP-27VPA by the US government.
• the Netherlands’ first military satellite, a CubeSat called BRIK I. The satellite was built by Innovative Solutions in Space and is owned by the Royal Netherlands Air Force.
• the first two optical satellites, STORK-4 and STORK-5, of a planned 14 satellite Earth observation constellation from SatRevolution. The constellation will provide views of Earth’s surface with 5 meter resolution.

This mission’s name is a reference to the studio album Tubular Bells that caused Richard Branson to create Virgin Records after other labels passed on the album’s demo.

Photo: One of the STORK satellites being integrated for launch. Credit: Virigin Orbit

Virgin Orbits' LauncherOne rocket provides orbital launch services for small satellite customers, including national governments and commercial/private industries.

Technical Specification:

70 ft in length.

57,000 lbm is the typical takeoff weight of a LauncherOne rocket, including the satellites.

8,000 mph is the typical maximum speed of LauncherOne's first stage.

17,500 mph is the typical maximum speed of LauncherOne's second stage.

75% – the amount of atmosphere LauncherOne has cleared at the point of release.

5 sec time between the release of LauncherOne and ignition of NewtonThree.

Originally designed to be launched from underneath the WhiteKnightTwo spaceplane, the same plane that launches suborbital Virgin Galactic missions, LauncherOne was redesigned in 2017 to fly underneath a 747 aircraft.

LauncherOne is the first air-launched liquid-fueled rocket in history and has a restartable second-stage engine for precise payload delivery operations once in orbit.

The rocket is carried into the air by Cosmic Girl, a modified 747 aircraft, and then launched from underneath one of the plane's wings. Its engine is ignited five seconds after release.

The air launch design means LauncherOne can be launched from any location on Earth. Virgin Orbit plans to use a variety of runways in California, Florida, the U.K., and potentially Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Guam.

Photo: LauncherOne data courtesy of Virgin Orbit

This is Cosmic Girl, a modified Boeing 747 aircraft built in 2001 for Virgin Atlantic airways. Virgin Orbit bought the plane in 2015 and transformed it into an air launch platform for the orbital LauncherOne rocket.

Cosmic Girl’s job is to provide data connections to LauncherOne and ferry the fully-fueled rocket from a runway up to its release altitude and location out over the open ocean.

During launch, the plane will pitch up 25 degrees before releasing LauncherOne.

Cosmic Girl will then immediately perform an evasive maneuver to safely get out of the way of the rocket so that the crew onboard the plane will be safe in the event of a LauncherOne failure at engine start -- which happened on the first mission.

Cosmic Girl then returns to a runway to prepare for its next mission. The plane's base is the Mojave Air & Space Port in California.

Photo Credit: Virgin Orbit

The waters off the coast of southern California are used by air-launched rockets, with their carrier planes taking off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, Mojave Air and Space Port, or Edwards Air Force Base, California.

Photo credit: Google