VIRGIN ORBIT’S FIRST LAUNCH FROM U.K., Jan 9, 2023, Newquay, U.K., 5:01 pm ET

Update, January 9, 4:15 pm ET:  The Virgin Orbit livesteam has started and it shows Cosmic Girl’s takeoff time as 10:01 pm GMT (5:01 pm EST), a bit earlier than previously listed.

Original Entry: Virgin Orbit has scheduled its first launch from the United Kingdom — its first international launch — for January 9 at 22:16 UTC (5:16 pm ET). Backup launch opportunities are available through mid-January. This is the first launch to orbit from U.K. soil.

It will be webcast on Virgin Orbit’s YouTube channel. According to a January 9 tweet from the UK  Space Agency, the livestream begins at 21:15 GMT, which is 4:15 pm EST.

T-3 hours! ✈️ 🚀

Watch the launch live from 21:15 GMT. 👇 #LaunchUK #StartMeUp #CountdownToCornwallhttps://t.co/BTO3bKkXOJ

— UK Space Agency (@spacegovuk) January 9, 2023

Virgin Orbit emailed the following detailed information to the media on January 8:

Virgin Orbit’s air-launched rocket, LauncherOne, is attached to an airplane, a Boeing 747 named Cosmic Girl. The runway for this flight is at Spaceport Cornwall in Newquay, Cornwall, U.K.  Once at the correct altitude, Launcher One will drop away from Cosmic Girl and fire its rocket engine to take the payloads to orbit.

This launch is named “Start Me Up” which the company says is “in honor of the Rolling Stones’ 1981 hit.”

The launch service was purchased by the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) as the first task order on NRO’s Streamlined Launch Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity Contract or “SLIC.”

The manifest includes:

• IOD-3 AMBER (aka IOD-3) – Developed by Satellite Applications Catapult (“SA Catapult”) and Horizon Technologies and built by AAC Clyde Space, all based in the U.K. IOD-3 Amber is expected to be the first of more than 20 Amber satellites to provide space-based Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) data to users.
• Prometheus-2 – Two cubesats owned by the U.K. Ministry of Defense’s (MOD) Defense Science & Technology Laboratory Dstl. These satellites, co-funded with Airbus Defence and Space who are designing them jointly with In-Space Missions, will support MOD science and technology (S&T) activities both in orbit and on the ground through the development of ground systems focused at Dstl’s site near Portsmouth.
• CIRCE (Coordinated Ionospheric Reconstruction CubeSat Experiment) – CIRCE is part of a joint mission between the U.K.’s Defense Science and Technology Laboratory and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL).
• DOVER – Developed by RHEA Group in the UK, it is the company’s first satellite in its 30-year history. The satellite is being co-funded through the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Navigation Program (NAVISP) and built by Open Cosmos of the United Kingdom. DOVER is a SmallSat that was created as a pathfinder for resilient global navigation satellite systems.
• ForgeStar-0 – Developed by Space Forge of Wales, the satellite is a fully returnable and reusable platform to enable in-space manufacturing. This launch will be the first for the company’s ForgeStar platform and will test future returns from space technology.
• AMAN – Oman’s first orbital mission, it is a single earth observation satellite meant to demonstrate the future feasibility of a larger constellation and was developed after a memorandum of understanding among the Sultanate of Oman, Polish Small Satellite manufacturer and operator SatRev, Poland-originated AI data analytics specialists TUATARA, and Omani-based merging technology innovator ETCO. The agreement includes additional planned small satellites, including this, the first in Oman’s history.
• STORK-6 – Stork-6 is the next installment of Polish Small Satellite manufacturer and operator SatRev’s STORK constellation. Virgin Orbit previously launched two spacecraft in this constellation on a previous launch and looks forward to continuing to launch SatRev’s STORK spacecraft in the future.