Virgin Orbit successfully launches rocket off 747 aircraft

(Virgin Galactic via Getty Images)

By Isoken Osagie

A 70-foot rocket, riding under the wing of a Boeing 747 aircraft launched itself into Earth's orbit on Sunday — making this the first successful launch for rocket startup Virgin Orbit, CNN reported.

The California-based company launched Virgin Orbit's 747 also known as Cosmic Girl around 10:50 a.m. PST with the LauncherOne rocket beneath the plane's left-wing.

LauncherOne was carrying nine small satellites on behalf of NASA's Educational Launch of Nanosatellites, (ELaNa) program. According to CNN, ELaNa allows high school and college students to design and develop tiny satellites. NASA then pays to launch these satellites into space.

Among the satellites launched was a temperature-monitoring satellite from the University of Colorado at Boulder and an experimental radiation-detection satellite from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

The company tweeted on Sunday, "According to telemetry, LauncherOne has reached orbit! Everyone on the team who is not in mission control right now is going absolutely bonkers. Even the folks on comms are trying really hard not to sound too excited."

Hours later, Virgin Orbit confirmed the project was successful, "Payloads successfully deployed into our target orbit! We are so, so proud to say that LauncherOne has now completed its first mission to space, carrying 9 CubeSat missions into Low Earth Orbit for our friends @NASA."

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