Virgin Galactic announced a second successful spaceflight of its VSS Unity spacecraft that will fly space tourists to the edge of space and back in the next few years.
This second spaceflight of VSS Unity on Feb. 22 was also the first with a passenger on board. This passenger was Beth Moses, Virgin Galactic's chief astronaut instructor. Moses has completed 400 flights at 0 g and was onboard to accumulate more data about how human bodies experience SpaceShipTwo flights. She's also expected to provide feedback on what the in-cabin experience is like for passengers.
Virgin Galactic has grand plans of being the first commercial spaceflight firm to fly paying space tourists into outer space by 2020. Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson has said he intends to become the first paying passenger to fly into space aboard VSS Unity on July 16, the 50th anniversary of the lift-off of the Saturn V rocket that took the first humans to the Moon in 1969 on Apollo 11.
Along with Moses on Feb. 22 mission was VSs Unity pilots Dave Mackay (Virgin Galactic's company's chief pilot) and Michael "Sooch" Masucci. In Dec. 13, 2018, both Mackay and Masucci became full-fledged U.S. astronauts by taking VSS Unity to an altitude of 83 kilometers or 51.4 miles -- Virgin Galactic's highest-flying rocket-powered flight at the time.
That record was beaten when both new astronauts flew VSS Unity to an altitude of 90 km (55.9 miles) and reached a top speed of Mach 3.0 on Feb. 22.
This flight also carried four payloads provided by NASA. Those experiments will provide data about the implications of microgravity on how liquids and gases interact, how payloads vibrate and how dust particles behave. It also tested electromagnetic field sensor equipment.
On Feb. 22, WhiteKnightTwo (the mother ship from which VSS Unity was launched) took off from the Mojave Air and Space Port launch site in California at1400 GMT). VSS Unity separated from WhiteKnightTwo about an hour into the flight, then fired its motor to scream into space.
Virgin Galactic plans to carry space tourists on suborbital flights for $250,000 each. Branson has said that he hopes to take his own first flight on July 161.
Virgin Galactic is developing commercial spacecraft that will fly space tourists into space. It will also conduct suborbital launches for NASA space science missions, and scientific institutions worldwide. Virgin Galactic hasn't revealed when passenger flight operations will begin at its Mojave Air and Space Port in California.
