Photo: Virgin Galactic
As promised since the last test flight it conducted back in May, private space company Virgin Galactic has performed this week its first commercial spaceflight. What it means is that, for the first time, the company took up to the edge of space and then safely back home paying customers.
The crew of the flight, which will go down in history as Galactic 01, took off from New Mexico on June 29, onboard the VSS Unity spacecraft, in its turn attached to its carrier plane. The aircraft climber to an altitude of 44,500 feet (13,563 meters), where it released the Unity.
The spacecraft accelerated to a top speed of Mach 2.88 (2,210 mph/3,557 kph), and kept climbing until it reached a top altitude of 52.9 miles (85 km). That's beneath the generally agreed limit to space, which is the Karman line, at 62 miles (100 km), but still high enough for the crew to perform the experiments they were sent up there to perform.
That would be a total of 13 experiments, covering a wide range of fields, from biomedicine to thermo-fluids dynamics. None of them has sufficiently been detailed, but if some interesting developments occurred, it's likely we’ll hear more about them in the near future.
As for the commercial crew that took this first flight, it was not comprised of solely civilians, like the ones to follow will, but by Air Force personnel as well.
More precisely, members of the Italian Air Force and National Research Council of Italy were on board: Colonel Walter Villadei and Lieutenant Colonel Angelo Landolfi from the Italian Air Force, and National Research Council engineer Pantaleone Carlucci. They were accompanied by Virgin Galactic's own Collin Bennet, at his second trip on the Unity already.
Now that the hurdle of the first commercial spaceflight was cleared, Richard Branson's company is planning the second one for the end of August. The names of the people in the crew were not announced yet. After Galactic 02, Virgin plans to conduct monthly flights, effectively opening the doors to space tourism.
As a reminder, a trip up on the Unity spaceship is not cheap. As listed by the company operating these flights, the experience will set one back $450,000, meaning not all civilians will get to taste the blackness of space firsthand.
The huge sum of money covers not only the flight, but multi-day training as well, and even preparation retreat at Spaceport America for the daring soul and an undisclosed number of family and friends.
We're anxiously waiting to see how Virgin's main competitor in this segment, Blue Origin, will respond. Jeff Bezos' company hasn’t lifted anything off the ground since September 2022, when one of its uncrewed New Shepard rockets failed seconds after launch.
The spacecraft accelerated to a top speed of Mach 2.88 (2,210 mph/3,557 kph), and kept climbing until it reached a top altitude of 52.9 miles (85 km). That's beneath the generally agreed limit to space, which is the Karman line, at 62 miles (100 km), but still high enough for the crew to perform the experiments they were sent up there to perform.
That would be a total of 13 experiments, covering a wide range of fields, from biomedicine to thermo-fluids dynamics. None of them has sufficiently been detailed, but if some interesting developments occurred, it's likely we’ll hear more about them in the near future.
As for the commercial crew that took this first flight, it was not comprised of solely civilians, like the ones to follow will, but by Air Force personnel as well.
More precisely, members of the Italian Air Force and National Research Council of Italy were on board: Colonel Walter Villadei and Lieutenant Colonel Angelo Landolfi from the Italian Air Force, and National Research Council engineer Pantaleone Carlucci. They were accompanied by Virgin Galactic's own Collin Bennet, at his second trip on the Unity already.
Now that the hurdle of the first commercial spaceflight was cleared, Richard Branson's company is planning the second one for the end of August. The names of the people in the crew were not announced yet. After Galactic 02, Virgin plans to conduct monthly flights, effectively opening the doors to space tourism.
As a reminder, a trip up on the Unity spaceship is not cheap. As listed by the company operating these flights, the experience will set one back $450,000, meaning not all civilians will get to taste the blackness of space firsthand.
The huge sum of money covers not only the flight, but multi-day training as well, and even preparation retreat at Spaceport America for the daring soul and an undisclosed number of family and friends.
We're anxiously waiting to see how Virgin's main competitor in this segment, Blue Origin, will respond. Jeff Bezos' company hasn’t lifted anything off the ground since September 2022, when one of its uncrewed New Shepard rockets failed seconds after launch.
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