LauncherOne launch overview

Kris Christiaens

Category: Launch overview

Read Time: 3 mins

Published: 23 December 2021

LauncherOne is an "air-launched" rocket developed by the aerospace company Virgin Orbit. Unlike other launchers, the LauncherOne rocket is not launched from a traditional launch pad but from under the wing of a modified Boeing 747 that first raises the rocket to an altitude of about eleven kilometers. LauncherOne was specially designed to bring small satellites such as cubesats or smallsats with a maximum weight of 500 kilograms into low Earth orbit (LEO). The LauncherOne rocket was launched for the first time in May 2020 and will be airborne from various locations on Earth in the future. Learn all about the different launches of the commercial LauncherOne rocket from the space company Virgin Orbit thanks to this handy overview!

Launch overview LauncherOne

No.	Date launch	Orbit	Payload	Mission succes?
1	25/05/2020	LEO	Starshine 4 (NASA) INTERN-SAT (Virgin Orbit)	Failure
2	17/01/2021	LEO	CACTUS-1 (Capitol Technology University) CAPE-3 (University of Louisiana at Lafayette) EXOCUBE-2 (NASA/JPL) MiTEE (University of Michigan) PIC 1 (Brigham Young University) PIC 2 (Brigham Young University) PolarCube (Colorado Space Grant Consortium) Q-PACE (University of Central Florida) RadFXSat-2 (Vanderbilt University / AMSAT) TechEdSat-7 (University of Idaho / NASA) Prometheus-2.8 (Los Alamos National Laboratory) Prometheus-2.11 (Los Alamos National Laboratory)	Success
3	30/06/2021	LEO	CNCE 1 (MDA) CNCE-3 (MDA) HALO-Net FFS (US Navy) Gunsmoke-J 4 (SMDC) BRIK-II (Royal Netherlands Air Force) STORK-4 (SatRevolution S.A.) STORK-5 (SatRevolution S.A.)	Success
4	13/01/2022	LEO	PAN-A (Cornell University) PAN-B (Cornell University) SteamSat-2 (SteamJet Space Systems) STORK-3 (SatRevolution S.A.) ADLER-1 (ÖWF) GEARRS 3 (NearSpace Launch) TechEdSat 13 (NASA Ames)	Success
5	02/07/2022	LEO	Recurve (AFRL) Slingshot 1 (The Aerospace Corporation) Gunsmoke-L 1 (SMDC) NACHOS 2 (Los Alamos National Lab.) MISR-B 1 (Special Operations Command) CTIM-FD (University of Colorado at Boulder) GPX 2(NASA Langley Research Center)	Success
5	09/01/2023	LEO	AMBER 1 (Catapult) Prometheus 2A (DSTL) Prometheus 2B (DSTL) CIRCE 1 (DSTL) CIRCE 2 (DSTL) DOVER (RHEA Group) ForgeStar 0 (Space Forge) Aman 1 (ETCO) STORK 6 (SatRevolution S.A.)	Failure