SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted his sympathies to small satellite launch firm Virgin Orbit after the latter on Monday reported the failure of its first air launch to orbit flight using a specially modified Boeing 747 named Cosmic Girl.
"Sorry to hear that," tweeted Musk on learning of the news. "Orbit is hard. Took us four attempts with Falcon 1."
Virgin Orbit had earlier tweeted to confirm a clean release of the payload, a two-stage rocket named LauncherOne, from Cosmic Girl. If it had been successful, LauncherOne would have reached Low Earth Orbit (LEO).
Virgin Orbit, which is owned by Sir Richard Branson, said the mission terminated shortly into the flight. Cosmic Girl and its flight crew are safe and have returned to base.
Will Pomerantz, Virgin Orbit's vice president of special projects, shared Musk's sentiments, saying "History is not terribly kind to maiden flights." Taking his best faith estimate, he estimates about half of maiden rocket flights fail. He said that's the sort of historical odds Virgin Orbit is up against.
LauncherOne is designed to deploy small satellites into LEO. Virgin Orbit said LauncherOne suffered an "anomaly" soon after firing its kerosene-fed first stage engine named NewtonThree.
It said the 21 meter-long LauncherOne maintained stability after release but the still unidentified anomaly occurred early in first stage flight. The company said it will learn more as its engineers analyze the data it's collected.
LauncherOne was carried aloft by Cosmic Girl from Mojave Air and Space Port in California. Crewed by two pilots and two launch engineers, Cosmic Girl flew west from Mojave. It turned south over the Pacific Ocean toward the rocket's drop point near California's Channel Islands, some 160 kilometers west-southwest of Long Beach.
At an altitude of 10 km (35,000 ft.), Cosmic Girl dropped LauncherOne to send it into freefall. LauncherOne ignited its NewtonThree engine four seconds later to begin its climb to LEO. The unknown anomaly then put an end to LauncherOne's maiden test flight. Virgin Orbit is expected to make a new attempt within the year.
LauncherOne was originally envisioned as being launched from the company's smaller aircraft named WhiteKnightTwo. The need to launch larger payloads for bigger paydays, however, soon convinced Virgin Orbit to evaluate a bigger launch aircraft. The result of this turnaround was the acquisition of Cosmic Girl for LauncherOne operations.
The larger Cosmic Girl allows the doubling of LauncherOne's payload capacity to 200 kg (440 lbs). Virgin Orbit believes payloads weighing 400 kg (880 lbs) can be launched.
