Virgin Orbit has successfully completed its first rocket drop test, paving the way for a real launch later this year.<\/p>\n
The company loaded a rocket onto its Boeing 747 launch aircraft – dubbed Cosmic Girl – and dropped a dummy LauncherOne rocket in flight over the Mojave desert.<\/p>\n
Virgin stated on Twitter that following this successful test, it would ramp up its efforts to launch a real rocket into space from the Boeing 747.<\/p>\n
The company plans to begin testing live launches later this year, after which it plans to deliver commercial orbital launches for satellite operators.<\/p>\n
Launching a rocket into space from a Boeing 747 which is already in flight eliminates much of the energy needed to send a payload into orbit, and could result in much cheaper commercial rocket launches compared to conventional methods.<\/p>\n
https:\/\/twitter.com\/Virgin_Orbit\/status\/1148999490109526016<\/p>\n
Virgin Orbit has successfully completed its first rocket drop test, paving the way for a real launch later this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341028,"featured_media":313045,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[35290,51625,10154,12249],"class_list":["post-313041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-boeing-747","tag-rocket","tag-space","tag-virgin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313041"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341028"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}