Mojave, California-based Stratolaunch will use the Boeing 747 that it is acquiring from bankrupt Virgin Orbit to double its fleet of aircraft dedicated to conducting flight tests of hypersonic vehicles, the company said on Thursday (May 25).

Rocket Lab said on Tuesday that it will use the manufacturing facility and equipment it acquired from bankrupt Virgin Orbit to accelerate the development of its new Neutron rocket. The company has no plans to integrate Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket into its line of launch vehicles, however, indicating the booster will likely never fly again.

Richard Branson’s bankrupt launch provider Virgin Orbit (OTCMKTS: VORBQ), which spent more than $1 billion developing the capability to launch satellites from a Boeing 747 jumbo jet, auctioned off its assets to Rocket Lab, Launcher, Stratolaunch, and a fourth company called INLIPER for just under $36.5 million on Monday, according to a court filing.

Bankrupt launch provider Virgin Orbit (OTCMKTS: VORBQ) has entered into a stalking horse agreement under which it would sell its Boeing 747 Cosmic Girl to Stratolaunch LLC for $17 million if there are no higher offers made for the aircraft.

MOJAVE, Calif., Nov. 14, 2022 (Stratolaunch PR) — Stratolaunch, LLC is pleased to announce a contract with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) to support the flight test of the company’s first expendable Talon-A hypersonic test vehicle, TA-1. Stratolaunch anticipates flying TA-1 in the first quarter of 2023.

MOJAVE, Calif. (Stratolaunch PR) — Stratolaunch announces the completion of its seventh flight test of Roc, the world’s largest flying aircraft. The aircraft flew for 3 hours and 1 minute over the Mojave Desert and reached an altitude of 27,000 feet (8200 meters), a new altitude record for the aircraft. 

by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

MOJAVE, Calif. — Stratolaunch’s giant Roc aircraft’s sixth flight test ended more than two hours earlier than planned on Thursday due to an undisclosed problem.

MOJAVE, Calif. (Stratolaunch PR) — Stratolaunch is excited to announce the public debut of its structurally complete Talon-A test vehicle, TA-0, in this week’s issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology. This first Talon-A vehicle will be used to test and validate Roc’s release system and characterize the separation dynamics of the Talon vehicle. In addition to the first view of the vehicle by itself, the article also includes recent photos of the first mating of TA-0 to Roc’s pylon located on the center wing.

by David Bullock
Staff Writer

Parabolic Arc conducted a Q&A with Kimberly Slater, the Commercial and Science Space Lead at Draper Laboratory, about the guidance, navigational and control software she has worked on for Stratolaunch’s Talon-A hypersonic test vehicle.

Tell me a little about yourself, your engineer and career background and how you got to work for Draper.

Right now I currently lead our civil commercial science space work at Draper, but my history before Draper was all in human space flight. My engineering degree is in man machine interface design. And everything I did before Draper was building, developing, testing, and flying scientific experiments on the space shuttle and space station. So, I did everything from design and build to writing software, writing the interface training manuals to the software—the procedure that the astronauts use on orbit—and then I did crew training for both the American and Russian crew for both space station and shuttle and then mission support and then mission control centers in both Moscow and Houston to support the mission. You know that whole ‘Houston we have a problem’ question when things on orbit and any anomaly has happened during that real time fast paced mission support. 

MOJAVE, Calif. (Stratolaunch PR) — Stratolaunch LLC is pleased to announce it has appointed two new executives to its corporate leadership team. Jackson Kemper, III joins as Chief Revenue Officer overseeing the company’s business and customer contract strategies. Mary Normand joins the team as Chief Financial Officer, managing the company’s financial actions. Their appointments are effective immediately.