LauncherOne wyniósł dwa polskie satelity 30.06. około 13:50 z pasa 12/30 w Mojave Air and Space Port wystartował samolot Boeing-747-400 "Cosmic Girl".
Podwieszona pod nim rakieta LauncherOne została zrzucona o 14:47, a 3,25 sekundy później nastąpił zapłon silnika
NewtonThree jej pierwszego stopnia. Rakieta wyniosła na orbitę o parametrach: hp=500 km, ha=500 km, i=60° trzy
satelity DIU i nanosat programu STP-VP27A dla USAF, BRIK-II (Holandia), STORK-4 i STORK-5 (MARTA) dla
SatRevolution (Polska).
http://lk.astronautilus.pl/n210616.htm#08LauncherOne launches “Tubular Bells: Part One”Virgin Orbit’s first operational mission deploys military CubeSatsJuly 1, 2021 Stephen Clark
Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket fires its kerosene-fueled main engine seconds after dropping from the company’s Boeing 747 carrier jet. Credit: Virgin Orbit(...) The mission was the third flight of Virgin Orbit’s expendable LauncherOne rocket. A first launch in May 2020 failed to reach orbit due to an engine problem shortly after ignition, but a second test flight in January successfully placed a cluster of NASA-sponsored CubeSats into orbit. (...)
With a crew of five, the Cosmic Girl carrier aircraft flew to the mission’s launch zone just south of the Channel Islands southwest of Los Angeles. The pilots guided the jumbo jet through the drop box for a “cold pass” to check winds and ensure mission control had a stable telemetry link with the rocket.
The aircraft then circled back in a “race track” pattern and lined up with the proper launch azimuth to the southeast.
Pilot Kelly Latimer pitched the 747 up at an angle of nearly 30 degrees before the rocket dropped from a pylon on the airplane’s left wing at an altitude of about 35,000 feet (10,700 meters).
Five seconds later, the rocket’s NewtonThree main engine ignited to propel LauncherOne into space. The kerosene-fueled engine produced more than 70,000 pounds of thrust at maximum power, and fired for more than three minutes before shutdown. (...)
The Dutch BRIK 2 satellite. Credit: Virgin OrbitThe seven payloads riding on Wednesday’s mission included CubeSats from the U.S. military, the Dutch military, and the Polish company SatRevolution.
Four of the CubeSats were manifested on the mission by the Department of Defense’s Space Test Program. The payloads are part of the STP-27VPA mission awarded to VOX Space, a Virgin Orbit subsidiary charged with marketing launch services to the U.S. government.
The military’s Defense Innovation Unit awarded the contract to VOX Space for the STP-27VPA mission.
One of the U.S. military payloads was a Gunsmoke-J technology demonstration satellite for the Army Space and Missile Defense Command, according to a Space Force spokesperson. The 3U CubeSat, about the size of a toaster oven, is designed to demonstrate how small satellites can respond to Army requirements, such as providing tactical imagery and data to battlefield commanders.
The Space Force spokesperson said there were two 3U CubeSats on-board Wednesday’s mission for the Missile Defense Agency. The CubeSat Network Communications Experiment Block 1, or CNCE Blk 1, payloads “will replicate an advanced on-orbit concept of operations involving satellite-to-satellite communications and satellite-to-ground communications in the space environment,” the spokesperson said.
The CNCE Blk 1 satellites will support experiments in “autonomous mesh networking,” according to the Missile Defense Agency.
The other U.S. military payload launched Wednesday was a 3U CubeSat for the Navy, the Space Force spokesperson said.
Col. Carlos Quinones, director of the Space Test Program, identified the payload as the Halo-NET Free Flyer satellite during Virgin Orbit’s launch webcast.
According to a regulatory filing with the Federal Communications Commission, Hal0-NET Free Flyer will test the survivability and reflectivity of a retroreflector array. The data will help engineers validate optical propagation models and influence the design of future optical communications payloads for the Navy, officials wrote in thee FCC filing. (...)
https://spaceflightnow.com/2021/07/01/virgin-orbits-first-operational-mission-deploys-military-cubesats/LauncherOne Achieves Second Successful Mission, Lifts Seven Payloads to OrbitBy Ben Evans, on June 30th, 2021
Mated beneath Cosmic Girl’s port wing, today’s mission marked the second fully successful flight by LauncherOne. Photo Credit: Virgin Orbit(...) Two weeks after the BRIK-II contract was inked, Poland’s SatRevoltion concluded a separate deal to fly a pair of small satellites, known as STORK-4 and STORK-5 (MARTA). These will form the initial members of an eventual 14-satellite-strong constellation, which, when fully operational, will gather multispectral medium-resolution imagery and data for customers spanning the energy and agricultural sectors of Poland, the United States and elsewhere. (...)
https://www.americaspace.com/2021/06/30/launcherone-achieves-second-successful-mission-lifts-seven-payloads-to-orbit/https://spaceflightnow.com/2021/06/30/virgin-orbit-tubular-bells-part-one-mission-status-center/https://spaceflightnow.com/2021/06/29/virgin-orbit-planning-to-launch-seven-small-satellites-wednesday/w SatRevolution
https://www.forum.kosmonauta.net/index.php?topic=2549.msg166870#msg166870 https://www.forum.kosmonauta.net/index.php?topic=2549.msg166911#msg166911https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2021/06/launcherone-first-operational/AA
https://www.forum.kosmonauta.net/index.php?topic=3726.msg166906#msg166906HALO-Net Free Flyer
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/halo-net-free-flyer.htmGunsmoke-J 2 (Jacob's Ladder 2)
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/gunsmoke-j.htmCNCE 1
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/cnce-blk1.htmCNCE 3
Brik-2
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/brik-2.htmSTORK 4
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/stork-1.htmSTORK 5 (MARTA)