Virgin Orbit Review

Virgin Orbit UK spaceport is working on a concept called the "CubeSat" concept and the company have signed an agreement with NASA to launch ten small CubeSats into space as part of the USgov cubesat program. The satellite will circle the Earth once or twice a day and it will be used for research purposes. It can also be used for monitoring weather systems, for broadcasting and for remote sensing. In fact, it may even help us find things that we haven't discovered yet! Can you imagine what it could do for mankind?

The design concept of the CubeSat is based on technology developed by Hughes in the early 1990's. Although this technology has been around for a long time, it has not been used to make a satellite since Virgin had acquired the rights from NASA to use the Polar Lidium satellites in orbit. This was later transferred to Virgin Orbit when the company acquired the rights to use the LUMASat satellite. This enabled Virgin Orbit to develop their unique CubeSats concept.

NASA

Although this is a very innovative idea, this concept could be useful if successful. A small satellite could be launched into a lower Earth orbit than the International Space Station (ISS). Many cubesats could then be positioned onto each LUMASat satellite at different altitudes. This would allow each satellite to rotate at differing angles in order to capture a variety of imaging sensors that would send back real-time data to earth.