OREANDA-NEWS. Virgin Orbit, British billionaire Richard Branson, is planning on May 24 to conduct a demonstration test over the Pacific Ocean of an air launch system for a launch vehicle designed to launch satellites into Earth orbit. According to Virgin Orbit on Wednesday, she will first try to send a rocket in this way into space.

The test is scheduled for next Sunday and in adverse circumstances will be rescheduled for May 25. In both cases, the time window opens at 10:00 UTC (20:00 Moscow time) and closes after four hours. The upcoming demonstration test was in preparation for five years. Virgin Orbit is aware that flight tests of similar systems, carried out by government organizations and private companies, statistically ended in failure in the middle of the allotted time. 

Branson's other company, Virgin Galactic, on May 1 conducted the first flight test in the sky over the State of New Mexico for the SpaceShipTwo series Unity spaceship.