Virgin Galactic is relaunching the group’s subsidiary flights

Madrid, 25 May. (Europe Press) –

Virgin Galactic successfully completed a six-person flight to the edge of space on its Unity spacecraft on May 25. It took off and landed at the Mojave Space Station in New Mexico.

The flight, known as Unity 25, lasted about 20 minutes. – According to the company’s Twitter account- and had two experienced pilots and four passengers, all Virgin Galactic employees. It’s the company’s first manned mission in nearly two years.

Virgin Galactic billed the mission as “the ultimate evaluation of the complete spaceflight system and astronaut experience” before launching commercial flights with paying customers.

The flight followed the profile of previous Virgin Galactic missions. Virgin Galactic’s massive white transporter, VMS Eve, took off from the company’s Spaceport America launch site in New Mexico. Raised Unity to an altitude of approximately 50,000 feet (15,244 meters).

Eve then launched Unity, and soon the pilots were firing the spacecraft’s hybrid rocket engine. Then unity rose to the edge of space, More than 50 miles (80 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface.

While the passengers on board experienced a few minutes of weightlessness, the pilots reconfigured the space plane to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere, then glided the vehicle down the runway. There the unity landed like an airplane.

This type of suborbital spacecraft has flown into space only four times before and has been plagued by technical problems during flights and a high-profile accident in 2014 that killed a pilot. The company, which previously hoped to launch a commercial space tourism service in late 2022, is also working to dispel doubts about its financial viability. Information from Bloomberg.

Virgin Galactic will not fly the Unity shuttle until July 2021. When the company brought its billionaire founder and five other company employees to the edge of space. The flight took place A week and a half ago Rival company Blue Origin LLC is taking its billionaire founder Jeff Bezos into space.

Branson’s flight signals that Virgin Galactic is ready to begin regular spaceflight. But a month and a half later, an article in the New Yorker revealed the trip Deviated from the intended flight path. US Federal Aviation Administration He eventually grounded Virgin Galactic flights while overseeing the investigation into the crash.

In September 2021, regulators gave Virgin Galactic the go-ahead to launch, but the following month the company said it would have to pull out of new planes while it makes design upgrades and other upgrades to its fleet. The company repeatedly pushed back the planned launch date for commercial service, eventually settling on late June 2023.

In April, Virgin Galactic conducted a glide flight with its flagship space shuttle, the VSS Unity, during which the vehicle dropped from its carrier aircraft and skidded off. on the runway without starting his engine.

A few weeks ago, Virgin Galactic has assured investors that it is on track to launch the commercial service as planned.. Its first mission will be a research aircraft for the Italian Air Force, including two Italian military officers and an aerospace engineer from the Italian National Research Council.

Public also bought tickets. Pays up to $450,000 per seat during last year’s sale. The price is higher than in the company’s early days, when customers were asked to pay $250,000.