After an eight month stand down to resolve issues revealed during the first mission of Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket, the company made their second orbital launch attempt on Sunday, January 17. The air-launched rocket successfully carried ten CubeSats to their target orbit for NASA’s Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) program.
The cosmic girl aircraft took off at 10:38 PST (18:38 UTC). Launch occurred at 11:39 PST (19:39 UTC), a little under halfway into the four hour launch window that opened at 10:00 PST (18:00 UTC). Backup launch dates were available later in January.