Today, Virgin Galactic achieved a new milestone in the company’s ongoing attempt to launch its space tourism business. SpaceShipTwo VMS Eve, the carrier plane, took off from Spaceport America in New Mexico carrying the VSS Unity around 8:35am local time (Mountain Daylight Time). Around 9:26am local time, VSS Unity detached from SpaceShipTwo and began making its way to space. This flight was a second attempt after an engine abort prevented the ship from reaching space back in December. After examining the data, Virgin Galactic released information saying the abort was due to a bad computer connection and there was no hardware issue. Today’s flight was, in the words of the aerospace industry, wonderfully “nominal.” VSS Unity had a successful engine burn, aiming for the the 80km “line of space” set by the US Air Force and NASA, and successfully reached apogee of 89.2km roughly ten minutes after detaching from SpaceShipTwo. Aboard the ship, pilots CJ Sturckow & Dave Mackay navigated VSS Unity which was carrying technology experiments for NASA. VSS Unity touched down on the runway at Spaceport America roughly 9:43am local time, 17 minutes after separation. That concluded another successful trial run for Virgin Galactic in their efforts to launch space tourism from Spaceport America. The company hasn’t released details on future flights though today’s successful mission will likely lead to positive news on customer flights soon. As noted on Twitter, there are still a number of test flights scheduled – including one with company founder Richard Branson abroad – before the company upgrades their vehicles for the commercial space tourism program. This is a developing story and additional details may become available.


All data is taken from the source: [ Ссылка ]
Article Link: [ Ссылка ]


#space #newsus #bbcnewstoday #newstodayabc #usanewstoday #newsworldnow #

свернуть