On May 25 2020 Virgin Orbit performed its first test on the LauncherOne rocket.

Although the rocket failed to reach orbit there was a lot of critical data collected.

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Images Credit: Virgin Orbit.

After all the preflight procedures were successful Virgin Orbits aircraft Cosmic Girl took off from Southern California& #39;s Mojave Air and Space Port just before 17:00 UTC.

It flew west out over the Pacific Ocean & followed its flight plan to 35000 feet.

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Credit: Virgin Orbit.

50 minutes into the flight the pull-up manevour was then preformed to release the LauncherOne rocket.

The 2 stage rocket was then released & the 1st NewtonThree engine ignited 5 seconds after release.

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(BTW this gif is awesome!!!https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="👇" title="Down pointing backhand index" aria-label="Emoji: Down pointing backhand index">)
Credit: Virgin Orbit

The plan was the NewtonThree 1st stage was to burn its engine for 3 minutes.

Then the NewtonFour 2nd stage would separate & ignite & take a dummy payload to orbit.

This didn’t happen though due to an anomaly early in LauncherOne’s 1st stage burn.

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Credit: Virgin Orbit

After that the Cosmic Girl aircraft arrived back safely at Mojave.

The good news is plenty of data was collected to analyse which was the main goal of the Launch Demo.

A future test date is yet to be set.

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The next LauncherOne rocket at factory.
Credit: Virgin Orbit