On January 13 at 22:53 UTC, a Virgin Orbit Launcher One launched the “Above The Clouds” mission from the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California.

The Cosmic Girl 747, which serves as the Launcher One’s flying launchpad, took off from the Mojave Spaceport in California an hour before launch flying over Los Angeles and then out over the Pacific Ocean. After the rocket was dropped from the plane, it successfully ignited its first-stage engine and climbed into orbit. Staging and all other flight events were nominal, and the seven payloads were successfully deployed into orbit an hour after launch.

The main customer for the third Launcher One commercial flight was the U.S. Department of Defense and NASA, which have four CubeSats on the flight. Also on the rocket were three commercial CubeSats. 

One of them, the ADLER-1 CubeSat, is notable not because of what it does (though what it does is pretty cool – it involves radar) but because of how it got onto the rocket. It was added to the mission late in December 2021 after twenty days of discussion. Thirty-six hours after the payload was selected for this mission, it was integrated onto the rocket, which almost never happens. Usually, it takes weeks to get a payload on a rocket.

More Information

Above the Clouds mission page (Virgin Orbit)

Launch video