The UK's first rocket launch from British soil is expected to take place on Monday, a few hours before midnight GMT, with additional back-up dates continuing into mid and late January.
If it succeeds, it will be a major milestone for UK space, marking the birth of a home-grown launch industry.
The launch will see Virgin Orbit’s jumbo, known as Cosmic Girl, carrying LauncherOne, to an altitude of approximately 35,000ft (10km) and then dropping it. Once released into the atmosphere, the LauncherOne rocket will accelerate to 8,000mph (12,875km/h) before deploying seven satellites into orbit with a variety of civil and defence applications.
"What we've seen over the last eight years is this building of excitement towards something very aspirational and different for Cornwall, something that started off as a project that not a lot of people really believed was ever going to happen," said Melissa Thorpe, who heads Spaceport Cornwall.
"What...