WASHINGTON – Space travel company Virgin Galactic said Monday that it will resume flights with missions this month for the first time in nearly two years, with commercial travel beginning in June.
The Unity 25 mission will take place in late May with four employees on board, according to Virgin Galactic, founded by British billionaire Richard Branson, who took part in the company’s final space flight in July 2021. It’s a schedule.
“Unity 25 will be the final evaluation of the complete spaceflight system and astronaut experience before commercial service launches in late June,” Virgin Galactic said in a statement.
Unity 25 will be the company’s fifth trip into space, defined as 50 miles (80 kilometers) above sea level.
Unlike other companies that use vertical launch rockets, Virgin Galactic uses a carrier aircraft that takes off from a runway, gains altitude and drops a rocket-powered plane that soars into space before returning to Earth.
The total travel time is 90 minutes, and passengers experience weightlessness for several minutes in the spacecraft cabin.
Virgin’s flight will launch from Spaceport America in New Mexico.
The Unity 25 mission crew consists of two men and two women. Beth Moses participated in her two previous Virgin Galactic flights, while Jamira Gilbert, Chris Huey, and Luke Mays spent several years training her NASA astronauts.
In addition, two pilots are assigned to the mothership and two pilots to the spacecraft.
The first commercial flight, Galactic 01, will include Italian Air Force passengers.
Virgin Galactic’s space program suffered years of delays and an accident that killed a pilot in 2014.
Virgin Galactic has sold 800 tickets for future commercial flights. 600 copies for $200,000 to $250,000 between 2005 and 2014, and since then he has sold 200 copies for $450,000 each.
Virgin Galactic competes with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin in the space tourism business. We sent 32 people into space.
However, Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket has been grounded since an accident in September 2022 shortly after its unmanned flight took off from Texas.
Blue Origin said in March that it hoped to resume flights soon. AFPMore
https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/virgin-to-launch-commercial-spaceflights-in-june Virgin to start commercial spaceflight in June