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The UK is gearing up to host its first ever rocket launch – but it’s quickly becoming a race against time to take off this side of Christmas.
The fabulously named Cosmic Girl is due to take off from Cornwall, with rehearsals having been given the green light following the granting of the UK’s very first spaceport licence in November.
While the precise details have been shrouded in secrecy since then, Virgin Orbit and Spaceport Cornwall had been targeting a date as soon as the week of 12 December.
But after it was revealed there are technical issues to be resolved, the date was reset for “the coming weeks”.
So, will Cosmic Girl beat Santa himself when it comes to flying over the UK this year?
As the clock ticks down, here is everything you need to know as the UK gets involved in the space race.
How will the launch work?
The key thing to realise about this launch is that it’s not going to remind you of a classic NASA spectacle, with some huge spacecraft launching vertically into the atmosphere.
Cosmic Girl may be named like a knock-off Star Wars ship, but it is in fact an old Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747.
The seats were ripped out, and the upper deck was converted into a control centre for launch engineers ahead of its arrival on the southwest coast from Virgin Orbit’s factory in California.
Under its left wing is LauncherOne, a 21m (69ft) rocket, which will be released at 35,000ft over the Atlantic Ocean before accelerating to 8,000mph on its mission to deploy seven satellites into orbit.
So when it comes to the view from Spaceport Cornwall, it will not look dissimilar to any other plane taking off when it jets off under the cover of night.
Cosmic Girl, operated by Virgin Orbit, has plenty of experience in that regard – in its past life it carried more than 2.5 million passengers on almost 8,300 flights.
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