virgin Galactic Corporation, billionaire Richard Branson will make its second commercial suborbital flight this Thursday with a reusable spaceplane and three tourists and three crew members to take off from New Mexico (USA) in another ship.
VSS Unity ship takeoff Scheduled to start at 10:00 local time (14:00 GMT) From Spaceport America in New Mexico, and return after about 70 minutes.
According to the company statement, Galactic 02 is Virgin Galactic’s seventh spaceflight, second commercial spaceflight and first tourists space.
The goal is to “reach several historic milestones and advance Virgin Galactic’s mission to expand access to space.”
Tourists traveling on VSS Unity are Olympian and first Virgin Galactic ticket holder, 80-year-old Jon Goodwin, and 46-year-old Keisha Schahaff, and her 18-year-old daughter Anastatia Mayers from Antigua and Barbuda, who won her seat in a draw. raised funds for the non-profit organization Space for Humanity.
The crew consists of Commander CJ Sturckow, pilot Kelly Latimer, and Virgin Galactic astronaut instructor Beth Moses, who trains passengers for their flight.
VSS Unity will not reach Earth orbitbut its orbit will provide several minutes of weightlessness for passengers at an altitude high enough that they can see the curvature of the Earth against the darkness of space, according to special medium Space.com.
VMS Eve, a Virgin Galactic transport aircraft, will lift VSS Unity to an altitude of approximately 15,000 meters. At that moment, it will leave Unity, which will start its engine and ascend into suborbital space.
last june, Virgin Galactic made its first commercial flight. After successfully completing a 90-minute journey where he reached the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space.
The ship was commanded by Mike Masucci and managed by Nicole Pecile, a former Italian Air Force member who currently works for Virgin Galactic and makes the first space flight.
VSS Unity had former astronauts Colin Bennett and Walter Villadei and Angelo Landolfi of the Italian Air Force, as well as engineer Pantaleone Carlucci of the Italian National Research Council responsible for conducting 13 experiments in a microgravity environment. .