Tests of the suborbital space plane SpaceShipTwo. Free Technical Library News

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Tests of the suborbital space plane SpaceShipTwo

27.04.2023

SpaceShipTwo yesterday completed the first flight in two years that Virgin Galactic has flown in preparation for commercial service.

Virgin Galactic has been developing and testing a system of carrier aircraft and SpaceShips to provide space tourism services since the early 2000s. The prototype SpaceShipOne spaceplane made its first flight in 2003, and in 2010 the SpaceShipTwo spaceplane, called the VSS Enterprise, took off for the first time. In the future, all test flights were carried out with the participation of VSS Unity, which was created to replace the first one that crashed during testing in 2014.

Recently, VSS Unity was once again taken to the skies by the carrier aircraft VMS Eve (each vehicle had two pilots) from the America Spaceport in New Mexico. Unity separated from the carrier at an altitude of 14 meters and began flying along the glide path to the runway, where it landed in 300 minutes. This flight test was the first for VSS Unity since a suborbital flight into space in July 9 - when Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson and other employees of the company were on board. Subsequently, both Unity and Eve underwent major overhauls, including upgrades to improve flight speed. The carrier aircraft arrived at the spaceport after the update on February 2021.

In the future, Virgin Galactic plans to test-fly the VSS Unity with four of the company's specialists who will join the two pilots to evaluate the customer experience and provide ground training. The date of the test has not been disclosed, but the company says it should analyze Unity's test flight data in the coming weeks before making a full suborbital spaceflight.

The company added that the schedule would allow Virgin Galactic to begin commercial service later in the second quarter of 2023. This first commercial flight will be a special research mission for the Italian Air Force, which Virgin Galactic signed a contract with in 2019.

Michael Kolglazer, Virgin Galactic's chief executive, said during the February 28 earnings report that he expects Unity to fly once a month - but that will take some time.

About 800 private astronauts have already signed up to fly with Virgin Galactic, and deals total $208 million, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Many of these customers can look forward to future Delta-class suborbital vehicles currently being developed by Virgin, which could begin flying as early as 2026.

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