Passengers and crew on VSS Unity rocket plane went for 90-minute suborbital ride to edge of space in landmark flight.
Two Italian air force officers and an aerospace engineer from the National Research Council of Italy joined a Virgin Galactic instructor and the spaceplane’s two pilots on a suborbital ride on Thursday that took them about 80km (50 miles) above the New Mexico desert.
The flight, dubbed Galactic 01, lasted about 75 minutes and comes two years after the company’s first, fully crewed test spaceflight of its VSS Unity rocket plane. The successful trip marks a turning point Virgin Galactic Holding Inc, which has been developing its commercial service for nearly 20 years while facing regular development setbacks.
“Welcome to space, astronauts,” Virgin Galactic’s Sirisha Bandla said during a live stream of the launch.
The US Space Agency NASA and the US Air Force both define an astronaut as anyone who has flown 80 km (50 miles) high or more.
Virgin Galactic uses a “mothership” aircraft with two pilots that takes off from a runway, gains high altitude, and then deploys the rocket-powered VSS Unity that soars into space at nearly Mach 3 (three times the speed of sound) before gliding back to Earth.
Passengers in the space plane’s cabin experience a few minutes of weightlessness and will be able to catch a glimpse of the planet’s curvature during their trip on Thursday.
TOMORROW, we’re launching The Spaceline for Earth with #Galactic01, our first scientific research mission! You can watch the moment live at 9:00 am MDT | 11:00am EDT. Sign up so you don’t miss it: https://t.co/5UalYTpQxj pic.twitter.com/D7mBX8wDcH
— Virgin Galactic (@virgingalactic) June 28, 2023
Virgin Galactic has sold approximately 800 tickets for its commercial flights – 600 were sold between 2005 and 2014 for $200,000 to $250,000, and 200 have been sold since then for $450,000 each.
Movie stars and other celebrities were among the first to snap up seats, but the company’s programme suffered a disaster in 2014 when a spaceplane on a test flight broke apart midair, killing the co-pilot and seriously injuring the pilot.
Thursday’s flight also had scientific aims, with the crew planning to collect biometric data, measure cognitive performance and record how certain liquids and solids mix in microgravity conditions.
According to Virgin Galactic, the company’s next scheduled commercial space flight – Galactic 02 – is planned for August, and monthly flights to space are expected to be rolled out following that launch.
Branson’s venture is competing in the “suborbital” space tourism sector with American billionaire Jeff Bezos’s company, Blue Origin, which has already sent 32 people into space. But since an accident in September 2022 during an unmanned flight, Blue Origin’s rocket has been grounded. The company promised in March to resume spaceflight soon.
Thursday’s scheduled launch comes shortly after Branson’s Virgin Orbit announced it was ceasing operations following a mission failure in the United Kingdom.
In January the company based in California sought to complete the first satellite launch from UK soil, with hopes the mission would be a considerable stepping stone for space exploration from the UK.
But the LauncherOne rocket failed to reach orbit and saw its payload of US and UK intelligence satellites dive into the ocean.