''Spirit of Mojave'', previously ''Cosmic Girl'' is a

Boeing 747-400 The Boeing 747-400 is a large, long-range wide-body airliner produced by Boeing Commercial Airplanes, an advanced variant of the initial Boeing 747. The ''Advanced Series 300'' was announced at the September 1984 Farnborough Airshow, target ...

aircraft. A former passenger airliner operated by

Virgin Atlantic Virgin Atlantic, a trading name of Virgin Atlantic Airways Limited and Virgin Atlantic International Limited, is a British airline with its head office in Crawley, West Sussex, England. The airline was established in 1984 as British Atlantic A ...

, it was purchased by

Virgin Galactic Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. is a British-American spaceflight company founded by Richard Branson and the Virgin Group conglomerate, which retains an 11.9% stake through Virgin Investments Limited. It is headquartered in California, and opera ...

in 2015 to be used as the first stage

launch platform A transporter erector launcher (TEL) is a missile vehicle with an integrated tractor unit that can transport, elevate to a firing position and launch one or more rockets or missiles. History Such vehicles exist for both surface-to-air missiles ...

(or

mothership A mother ship, mothership or mother-ship is a large vehicle that leads, serves, or carries other smaller vehicles. A mother ship may be a maritime ship, aircraft, or spacecraft. Examples include bomber aircraft, bombers converted to carry exp ...

launch pad A launch pad is an above-ground facility from which a rocket-powered missile or space vehicle is vertically launched. The term ''launch pad'' can be used to describe just the central launch platform (mobile launcher platform), or the entire c ...

) for the

air launch Air launching is the practice of releasing a rocket, missile, parasite aircraft or other aircraft payload from a mother ship or launch aircraft. The payload craft or missile is often tucked under the wing of the larger mother ship and then "dropp ...

stage of the

smallsat A small satellite, miniaturized satellite, or smallsat is a satellite of low mass and size, usually under . While all such satellites can be referred to as "small", different classifications are used to categorize them based on mass. Satellites c ...

orbital launch vehicle A launch vehicle is typically a rocket-powered vehicle designed to carry a payload (a crewed spacecraft or satellites) from Earth's surface or lower atmosphere to outer space. The most common form is the ballistic missile-shaped multistag ...

, the

LauncherOne LauncherOne was a two-stage orbital launch vehicle developed and flown by Virgin Orbit that had operational flights from 2021 to 2023, after being in development from 2007 to 2020. It was an air-launched rocket, designed to carry smallsat ...

. In 2017, the aircraft was transferred to the orbital launch subsidiary,

Virgin Orbit Virgin Orbit was a company within the Virgin Group that provided launch services for small satellites. The company was formed in 2017 as a spin-off of Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic space tourism venture to develop and market the LauncherOn ...

, and its livery updated to ''Virgin Orbit''. LauncherOne attempted its first launch on 25 May 2020; the launch was a failure. The first successful launch (second launch in total) took place on 17 January 2021.

declared

Chapter 11 bankruptcy Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code ( Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, w ...

on April 4, 2023. ''Cosmic Girl'' was subsequently sold at auction to

Stratolaunch Stratolaunch LLC is a private American aerospace company providing high-speed flight test services. It was founded in 2011 to develop a new air-launched space transportation system, with its corporate headquarters in Seattle. The company and ...

, to complement their existing Roc launch platform for their Talon Hypersonic testbed vehicle, and was renamed ''Spirit of Mojave''.

Airliner

''Cosmic Girl'' was assembled in 2001 at the

Boeing Everett Factory The Boeing Everett Factory, officially the Everett Production Facility, is an airplane assembly facility operated by Boeing in Everett, Washington, United States. It sits on the north side of Paine Field and includes the largest building in th ...

as a Boeing 747-41R with the

serial number A serial number (SN) is a unique identifier used to ''uniquely'' identify an item, and is usually assigned incrementally or sequentially. Despite being called serial "numbers", they do not need to be strictly numerical and may contain letters ...

32745. The aircraft's first flight was on 29 September 2001, and it was delivered to

on 31 October 2001, where she was registered as G-VWOW. She was named for the

Jamiroquai Jamiroquai ( ) are an English acid jazz and funk band from London. Formed in 1992, they are fronted by vocalist Jay Kay, and were prominent in the London-based funk and acid jazz movement of the 1990s. They built on their acid jazz sound in th ...

song " Cosmic Girl". On 3 November 2005, the aircraft was landing at Runway 27R at

Heathrow Airport Heathrow Airport , also colloquially known as London Heathrow Airport and named ''London Airport'' until 1966, is the primary and largest international airport serving London, the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdo ...

when a crosswind caused her to roll to the left, and the left-most (No. 1) engine struck the ground. The plane was transferred to

in 2015 and re-registered in the United States as N744VG. ''Cosmic Girl'' was based at

Long Beach Airport Long Beach Airport is a public airport northeast of downtown Long Beach, California, Long Beach, in Los Angeles County, California, United States. It is also called Daugherty Field, named after local aviator Earl Daugherty. The airport was an ...

. For the second operational flight of the LauncherOne vehicle, however, the plane took off for a launch (which failed) from

Newquay Airport Cornwall Airport Newquay is the main commercial airport for Cornwall, England located at Mawgan in Pydar, northeast of the town of Newquay on Cornwall's north coast. Its runway was operated by RAF St Mawgan before 2008, and is now owned by ...

, United Kingdom, on 9 January 2023.

Launch platform

The jetliner was in service with the airline until October 2015. The airliner, previously leased by

, was purchased outright by

Virgin Group Virgin Group Ltd is a British multinational venture capital conglomerate founded by Richard Branson and Nik Powell in February 1970. Virgin Group's date of incorporation is listed as 1989 by Companies House, who class it as a holding compa ...

for

, and registered as N744VG, in November 2015. A 747 was selected due to its carrying capacity. The acquisition of the 747 allowed the use of separate carrying aircraft for SpaceShipTwo and LauncherOne. With the spinoff of

in 2017, ''Cosmic Girl'' was also transferred. The

air launch to orbit Air-launch-to-orbit (ALTO) is the method of launching smaller rockets at altitude from a heavier conventional horizontal-takeoff aircraft, to carry satellites to low Earth orbit. It is a follow-on development of air launches of experimental air ...

LauncherOne

rocket A rocket (from , and so named for its shape) is a vehicle that uses jet propulsion to accelerate without using any surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Rocket engines work entirely ...

was originally envisioned to operate from the smaller airplane

WhiteKnightTwo The Scaled Composites Model 348 White Knight Two (WK2) is a quadjet cargo aircraft that was used to lift the SpaceShipTwo (SS2) spacecraft to release altitude. It was developed by Scaled Composites from 2007 to 2010 as the first stage of Tier 1b, ...

(WK2) launch platform, used for the suborbital

Tier 1b Tier or tiers may refer to: Groupings *Organizational, a ranking relationship involving order in a collective and its subordinate components *Ranking, a relationship involving order between a set of observations or variables *Data center tiers, ...

system of WK2 and

SpaceShipTwo The Scaled Composites Model 339 SpaceShipTwo (SS2) was an air-launched suborbital spaceplane type designed for space tourism. It was manufactured by The Spaceship Company, a California-based company owned by Virgin Galactic. SpaceShipTwo was ...

(SS2). As the size of LauncherOne expanded to better encompass the marketplace and acquire marketshare of small launches, the rocket outgrew WK2, leading to the evaluation of bigger launch aircraft, and the acquisition of ''Cosmic Girl'' for LauncherOne operations. The use of a larger airplane allows doubling of LauncherOne payload capacity to , though with the selection of a 747, ultimately, may be supported. 747s have previously been used to air launch other craft, including the Space Shuttle ''Enterprise''. The use of ''Cosmic Girl'' marks the first use of a 747 as a space launch platform. The LauncherOne attachment pylon is situated on the left wing, where on a normal 747, the fifth engine attachment point is located for ferrying engines. This point is located between the fuselage and the left inboard engine. LauncherOne would be dropped from ''Cosmic Girl'' at a height of . The maximum payload limit for LauncherOne operations on ''Cosmic Girl'' is . Making her first flight on 25 May 2020, a privately funded air-launched rocket, LauncherOne, developed and built by Virgin Orbit, failed to reach space after release from ''Cosmic Girl'' over the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...

. The second launch, on 17 January 2021, successfully delivered 10 CubeSats to

low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an geocentric orbit, orbit around Earth with a orbital period, period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an orbital eccentricity, eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial object ...

(LEO). Virgin Orbit's third launch (and first with commercial payloads, entitled "Tubular Bells") successfully launched on 30 June 2021. Launch 4 "Above the Clouds" successfully reached orbit on 13 January 2022. Launch 5 "Straight Up" successfully reached orbit on 1 July 2022. After it was postponed several times due to regulatory issues, the sixth launch took place on 9 January 2023. The rocket failed to reach orbit. It was the first and only failure for Virgin Orbit with commercial payloads. This final launch for Virgin Orbit marked its first international launch and the first ever rocket launched from UK soil.

Notes

References

{{Boeing 747 family Individual aircraft Boeing 747 Vehicles introduced in 2001 Virgin Orbit Virgin Galactic Virgin Atlantic Aircraft related to spaceflight

Airliner

Launch platform

See also

Notes

References