Start me up Mission sees first Orbital Flight in UK History; Success!

By Dana Malcolm

Staff Writer 

#UnitedKingdome, January 15, 2023 – After seven decades of operation, the British Space Program saw the first orbital launch in UK and European history dubbed MissionStart Me Up successfully take off on Monday, January 9th.

Making the orbital flight was a LauncherOne rocket created by Virgin Orbital, a sister company to Virgin Atlantic, carried by a Boeing 747 aircraft called Cosmic Girl.

An orbital flight is when a spacecraft goes all the way around the earth, a full 360° if you will. As described by NASA, in its simplest form an orbital flight is basically taking a projectile and firing it so hard it has enough momentum to make a full circle around the planet before falling back to earth.

Thousands of people watched live as Cosmic Girl took off from Spaceport Cornwall for the UK and US Joint Mission, set at 9:15 pm British time so it wouldn’t affect any of the other commercial flights.

Despite the imposing (and beautiful!) photos of Cosmic Girl and LauncherOne getting ready for takeoff the piece of machinery that actually went into space was much smaller.

First, the 747 aircraft took LauncherOne high into the air (above 3500 feet) and released it. The rocket then sent the payload or a small part of LauncherOne into orbit. That payload contained seven satellites for different companies and governments who wanted them dropped into space. The UK reportedly had two shoebox-sized satellites on board.

Virgin Orbit had maintained that given the number of firsts associated with the flight they would be taking a very conservative approach to launching and hinted that should any weather or other restrictions occur they would reconsider the launch but the event went off without a hitch.