Trip to space | Virgin Galactic inaugurates its suborbital flights for tourists today

2023-08-10 14:58:15

Virgin Galactic Company, billionaire’s Richard Branson, will make its second commercial suborbital flight this Thursday with a reusable space plane that will take off from New Mexico (USA) propelled by another ship and with three tourists and three crew members on board.

The takeoff of the ship VSS Unity is scheduled to start at 10:00 local time (14:00 GMT) from Spaceport America, in New Mexico, and his return for about 70 minutes later.

According to a company statement, Galactic 02 is Virgin Galactic’s seventh spaceflight, its second commercial spaceflight and its first with tourists space.

The goal is to “achieve several historic milestones and further Virgin Galactic’s mission to expand access to space.”

The tourists who will travel aboard the VSS Unity are Jon Goodwin, 80, an Olympian and first Virgin Galactic ticket holder, and Keisha Schahaff, 46, and her daughter Anastatia Mayers, 18, from Antigua and Barbuda, who won their seats in a raffle that raised funds for the non-profit organization Space for Humanity.

The crew consists of Commander CJ Sturckow, pilot Kelly Latimer and the Virgin Galactic astronaut instructor who trained the passengers for their flight, Beth Moses.

VSS Unity will not reach Earth orbitbut its trajectory will provide several minutes of weightlessness for passengers, at an altitude high enough that they can see the curvature of the Earth against the blackness of space, according to the specialized medium Space.com.

A Virgin Galactic transport aircraft, VMS Eve, will lift VSS Unity to an altitude of around 15,000 metres. At that moment, it will detach from Unity, which will start its engine and ascend to suborbital space.

Last June, Virgin Galactic made its first commercial flight, after successfully completing a 90-minute journey during which he reached the border between Earth’s atmosphere and space.

The ship was commanded by Mike Masucci and was piloted by former Italian Air Force member Nicole Pecile, who now works for Virgin Galactic and made his first space flight.

On board VSS Unity were former astronaut Colin Bennett and Italians Walter Villadei and Angelo Landolfi, from the Italian Air Force, as well as engineer Pantaleone Carlucci, from the Italian National Research Council, who were in charge of carrying out 13 experiments in the microgravity environment.