Virgin Orbit, a company within the Virgin Group, has canceled the launch of its fifth flight of the LauncherOne rocket after one of the propellant's temperatures was deemed to be "slightly out of bounds."
The decision was made before the take-off of Cosmic Girl, which is the carrier aircraft, according to The Verge.
Virgin Orbit Cancels Launch
The Virgin Orbit mission called Straight Up consists of seven satellites from the United Space Force and NASA that are designed for low Earth orbit.
Straight Up is still expected to be the first nighttime launch of Virgin Orbit, with a 24-hour turnaround.
The launch of Virgin Orbit was procured by the Space Force's Rocket Systems Launch Program, with payloads given by the Space Test Program.
The USSF designation for the mission is STP-S28A, and two satellites are also part of the Educational Launch of Nanosatellites or ELaNa 39 mission for NASA.
All seven satellites of Virgin Orbit will be deployed into a low Earth orbit at an altitude of 500km, inclined 45 degrees. This is the same orbit that LauncherOne reached on the Above the Could mission back in January.
Just like all of the previous LauncherOne flights, the Cosmic Girl carrier aircraft will depart from Mojave Air and Space Port located in California and fly out over the Pacific Ocean to release LauncherOne, according to SpaceFlightNow.
Satellites Aboard Virgin Orbit
Compact Total Irradiance Monitor-Flight Demonstration or CTIM-FD is the first payload on board Straight Up. It is a 6U CubeSat that is launched as part of the ELaNa 39 mission, according to Space.com.
CTIM-FD, which was designed and developed by Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, aims to aid the development of new, smaller technologies to measure Total Solar Irradiance.
Total Solar Irradiance is the amount of incident solar radiation that the Earth gets from the Sun. These types of measurements are important for predicting the local weather as well as studying global climate change.
Another satellite that will be on board is NASA Langley Research Center's GPX-2, as it was also chosen for the ELaNa 39 mission.
GPX-2 is a 3U CubeSat designed as a test bed for commercial global positioning systems. These types of systems are planned to enable small satellites to conduct proximity operations in orbit, like on-orbit assembly, formation flying, and docking.
The other satellite on board Straight Up is Recurve, developed by the US Air Force Research Lab.
This satellite is meant to demonstrate the adaptive radio frequency capabilities, including the evaluation of mesh network behavior to route data to military personnel.
Meanwhile, the Slingshot 1 satellite, which is also on board, is provided by the Aerospace Corporation. It is a 12U CubeSat to simplify satellite communication architecture.
This satellite uses the SatCat5 data interface, which uses the ethernet-type connections to connect different payloads on board the Virgin Orbit.
The experiments on board Slingshot 1 include an attitude control system experiment, a GPS transponder for traffic management in space, a laser communications downlink system, and a hydrogen peroxide thruster.
Related Article: Virgin Orbit Launch: Test Flight Terminated Shortly After Cosmic Girl Released the Rocket
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Written by Sophie Webster
