Virgin Orbit rocket reaches Earth orbit from the wing of a 747 washingtonpost.com

The flight was the company’s first successful trip into space, launching a small rocket from the wing of a 747 airplane flying over the Pacific Ocean.

The “air launch” technique means the rocket is already above much of the atmosphere and traveling just under Mach 1, or the speed of sound, when it fires its engines. And instead of requiring a lot of ground infrastructure, the company can be flexible, essentially taking off from any runway that can accommodate a 747.

Sunday’s mission was carrying 10 satellites in cooperation with a NASA program that allows universities and others to launch small satellites for Earth observation. All the satellites “successfully deployed into our target orbit.”