Virgin Orbit sends satellites into space

Bloomberg

Billionaire Richard Branson’s orbital-rocket system put its first satellites into space, after a previous attempt failed in May.
Virgin Orbit said a Boeing Co 747 named Cosmic Girl took off from California
carrying the company’s LauncherOne rocket, which was then released and ignited before successfully reaching orbit. It then deployed its payload: nine miniature satellites known as CubeSats developed by Nasa.
“LauncherOne has now completed its first mission to space,” the company said on Instagram. “Today’s sequence of events for #LaunchDemo2 went exactly to plan.”
The successful launch will come as a boost for the company and for Branson, who has seen the Covid-19 pandemic deal a brutal blow to his leisure and travel assets. The company ultimately plans to use the rockets to put small satellites into space and compete with ground-based launches such as those from Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp.
A first demonstration of LauncherOne in May saw the rocket lose ignition shortly into flight due to a breach in a high-pressure line carrying liquid oxygen to the engine. This time, the company said the engine ignition was “perfectly executed.”