NASA has awarded commercial spaceline Virgin Galactic a $4.7 million contract for the launch of more than a dozen cutting-edge experimen...
NASA has awarded commercial spaceline Virgin Galactic a $4.7 million contract for the launch of more than a dozen cutting-edge experimental satellites.
The satellites, which will be selected and provided by NASA, will fly on a test flight of Virgin Galactic’s dedicated small satellite launch vehicle, LauncherOne.
NASA’s order, which comes through the agency’s Venture Class Launch Services program, represents a tangible sign of the space leader’s increasing embrace of small satellites as an important means for conducting research and development. Previously, NASA purchased a suborbital flight for a dozen experiments onboard Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo—meaning NASA is now a customer of both of Virgin Galactic’s privately-funded space vehicles.
LauncherOne is designed to provide affordable, reliable, and responsive orbital launches for small satellites. As an air-launched system, LauncherOne can optimize each mission to customer requirements by operating from a variety of launch sites.
The company announced recently as part of World Business Satellite Week in Paris that for a price below US $10 million, LauncherOne will launch 200 kg into the high altitude Sun-Synchronous Orbits most commonly desired by small satellite missions
Virgin Galactic has also achieved a 90-second hotfiring of LauncherOne’s NewtonThree main rocket engine recently.
