Virgin Orbit’s first launch demonstration flight has ended in a very unceremonious fashion. The spaceflight firm reported a “clean release” of LauncherOne from the Cosmic Girl host aircraft, but the rocket’s journey “terminated shortly into the flight.” In other words, LauncherOne didn’t have a realistic chance of reaching orbit.

The company had warned that the flight might not end well. This was the first time anyone had lit up a liquid-fuelled rocket at high altitude in a horizontal position, and it wasn’t clear if the rocket would last more than a brief moment.

Virgin Orbit is finally ready to try a proper launch demo. The spaceflight outfit now expects the launch demo mission to take place on either May 24th or May 25th between 1PM and 5PM Eastern each day. If there’s enough of a launch window, the Cosmic Girl carrier aircraft will release LauncherOne over the Pacific, where the rocket will fire its engine in mid-air for the first time. It will sustain that flight for as long as possible and deploy a payload in orbit if successful, Virgin said.

The company is aware this is risky. No one has previously lit a liquid-fuelled rocket in a horizontal position at a 50-mile attitude — this could go well, or it could go spectacularly wrong.

Virgin Orbit is a spinoff of Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and is dedicated to low-cost smallsat projects. This new Virgin Orbit endeavor was reportedly inspired by NASA’s recent InSight mission, which successfully sent two cubesats to Mars. Now, the company believes it can send its own similar spacecraft (as light as 110 pounds) into deep space using its LauncherOne rocket.

The potential for small satellites stretches far beyond LEO – and whoever said Virgin’s orbit was limited to the Earth?

We’re above and beyond excited to announce our first mission to the Red Planet. https://t.co/bxiV1RuIAs

— Virgin Orbit (@Virgin_Orbit) October 9, 2019

Once the cubesats reach the planet, they may take photos, study the atmosphere or look for water. Eventually, Virgin Orbit may examine the moons of Mars, Venus and “maybe a couple of the asteroids in the asteroid belt,” Will Pomerantz, the vice president of special projects at Virgin Orbit, told The Verge.

Virgin Orbit will have to complete its LauncherOne rocket first. The 70-foot-long rocket will be dropped from Virgin Orbit’s Boeing 747 carrier, dubbed “Cosmic Girl.” The rocket will then blast off from mid-air. LauncherOne has completed ‘captive carry’ and drop tests, but it has yet to take its first test flight. The success of these Mars-based cubesat missions will likely depend on LauncherOne.

The unique feature of the Virgin Orbit program is how quickly a launch can be arranged. Typically, a launch takes years of planning and can only take place from certain sites which access particular orbits. This means that access to a given orbit can never be guaranteed on short notice. However, Virgin believes it can offer launches with as little as a week’s notice by making use of its customized 747-400 aircraft which acts as a “flying launch pad.”

This speed of deployment is a particular selling point for the military. “We’ve built a launch system to address commercial needs, but we’ve found it has enormous advantages for government customers,” said Dan Hart, President and CEO of Virgin Orbit.

The RAF’s Artemis project is not to be confused with NASA’s Artemis project. NASA’s Artemis is a commercial partnership for moon landings, and the RAF’s Artemis is a commercial partnership for launching satellites. Despite the similar names and fields, they are totally different projects.

Hart also expressed optimism that the project could support peaceful international relations in space: “Ultimately, we are hopeful that by demonstrating the capability to quickly and easily deploy and replace satellites in Low Earth Orbit we will be helping to remove the incentive for any nation to invest the money in harming another nation’s satellite.”

Virgin Orbit performed a successful drop test of its LauncherOne vehicle a few weeks ago. Now it will finalize assembly and testing of its orbital rocket before the first launch into space, scheduled for later this year.

Company chief Dan Hart told CNBC in an interview that he hoped the first full-fledged launch would take place “before the end of the summer.” A first commercial launch, meanwhile, could come roughly eight to 10 weeks after that. Virgin already has six rockets in progress in its factory, and thinks it can produce “beyond 20” per year, Hart added.

The relatively quick schedule isn’t completely outlandish. Unlike Virgin Galactic, the Orbit team isn’t carrying crewed vessels into space — there’s still a lot to consider, but there are clearly fewer variables. As it is, the team has plenty of incentive to hurry. Virgin expects to charge between $10 million to $15 million per flight, which is a bargain compared to other aircraft-based launches and many conventional rockets. If successful, it could become a go-to option for satellite operators that want to trim their costs.

Ever wonder what #LauncherOne looks like from Cosmic Girl’s perspective? Here’s some more footage from our most recent captive carry flight test, featuring never-before-seen angles of our flying launchpad. pic.twitter.com/IqMNi5mK2x

— Virgin Orbit (@Virgin_Orbit) June 7, 2019

In fact, Virgin Orbit will release a fully built and fully loaded LauncherOne during that flight. The company says it will be gathering data on a lot of things, but the first drop test is mostly about the first few seconds after release. It’s how the company can find out whether the rocket can cleanly break free from its carrier aircraft, a modified 747, and how it can observe the LauncherOne free falling through the air.

“This upcoming drop test is a huge deal for our team. It represents the last major step of a development program we began in 2015, focused not just on designing a rocket but proving it out alongside the modified 747 that serves as our flying launchpad,” Virgin Orbit wrote in its announcement.

While there’s no definite date for the launch yet, the company’s carrier aircraft and test rocket are ready to go anytime. Virgin Orbit is just coordinating with authorities to secure the airspace over the Edwards Air Force Base before announcing when the flight will take place.

Sometime in early 2020, Vector Launch, VOX Space and a third, anonymous competitor will attempt to blast their rockets into low-Earth orbit, twice in a matter of weeks. They won’t know where they’re going to launch from, the orbit they’ll travel or the payload they’re expected to carry until shortly before the mission. And they’ll have to use minimal infrastructure.

VOX Space, a subsidiary of Virgin Orbit, will air-launch its rocket from a modified Boeing aircraft. While Vector plans to use its flexible launch site technology. We won’t know more about the third competitor until closer to the mission. (Though, based on the DARPA photo above, we might guess that it’s Stealth Space Company.) Each of the teams has received $400,000. If they complete the first launch, they’ll each receive a $2 million prize, and if they complete the second, they’ll be ranked and eligible to receive $10 million, $9 million and $8 million, respectively.

Those incentives show how important this is to DARPA. The agency wants to transform the way the military uses space and hopes, one day, planning space travel will be as quick and painless as air travel. The goal of this challenge is to prove that could be possible.