Virgin Galactic - Successful Unity 22 Spaceflight

Today, virgin galactic successfully concluded the 22nd test flight of the SpaceShipTwo vehicle VSS Unity and the first mission with a full crew in the cabin, including the company's founder Richard Branson. Their goal was to evaluate the cabin and customer experience as well as the conditions for conducting research and the effectiveness of the five-day pre-flight training program at Spaceport America in New Mexico.

The spaceship, together with the mothership VMS Eve (a white knight two spaceplane carrier), took of at 8:40 am MDT (14:40 UTC) from Spaceport America. After system checkouts were performed on both aircrafts, VMS eve dropped VSS Unity at 9:25 am MDT (15:25 UTC) at an altitude of 46375 ft. The spaceship two ignited its engine for sixty seconds during which it reached mach 3.1. After engine cut-off, VSS Unity continued to climb to an altitued of 53.5 miles (85.7 km) at T+02:38. Although not reaching the Kármán line (100km), the crew exceeded the 80 km marks required by NASA and the US space force for being granted astronout wings. After reentry, VSS Unity transitioned into gliding at T+06:00 and landed at T+14:17.

The mission specialists in the cabin were Beth Moses, Chief Astronaut Instructor; Colin Bennett, Lead Flight Operations Engineer; Sirisha Bandla, Vice President of Government Affairs and Research Operations; and the Company’s founder, Sir Richard Branson. The VSS Unity pilots were Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci, while Kelly Latimer and CJ Sturckow piloted VMS Eve.

Virgin Galactic streamed the flight live on YouTube in a

Virgin Galactic's 22nd test flight was much anticipated by the space community and also received broad mainstream media coverage around the globe, especially as a fierce contest or race to space between the multibillionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos preceded the event. Just two days earlier, Bezos' company Blue Origin, which planes its own commercial flight on July 20th with the New Shepard rocket, posted a tweed, lining out the differences between the two approaches.