Virgin Galactic carried out its first suborbital mission of 2024 on Jan. 26, as the company prepares to conclude flights of its current spaceplane.
The VSS Unity spaceplane, attached to the VMS Eve mothership aircraft, took off from Spaceport America in New Mexico at 12 p.m. Eastern. About 45 minutes later, Unity separated and ignited its hybrid rocket engine. The vehicle reached an altitude of 88.8 kilometers before gliding back to a runway landing at the spaceport at 12:56 p.m. Eastern, according to company data.
Virgin Galactic’s Galactic 06 flight included four customers for the first time, in addition to its two pilots. Previous commercial flights had three customers on board along with a Virgin Galactic astronaut trainer.
As with recent flights, Virgin Galactic revealed the identities of the four private astronauts only after the mission. The passengers were Americans Neil Kornswiet and Robie Vaughn, Ukrainian-American Lina Borozdina, and Austrian Franz Haider. Unity was under the command of C.J. Sturckow with Nicola Pecile as the pilot.
Unlike previous flights, Virgin Galactic did not provide a webcast of the launch, instead opting to give updates on social media. The updates were significantly delayed compared to the timing of flight activities: the post on X (formerly Twitter) announcing the landing of Unity was published more than 35 minutes after landing.
“The success of Galactic 06 and the company’s other commercial spaceflights in recent months only increases our confidence in the repeatability of our product and our ability to deliver a superlative experience to our customers,” said Michael Colglazier, chief executive of Virgin Galactic, in a statement.
This flight was the first since a dedicated research flight, Galactic 05, on Nov. 2. That flight was the sixth in less than six months for the vehicle, but Virgin Galactic announced it would pause flights until January for an annual maintenance period.
Following Galactic 05, Virgin Galactic stated it would soon wind down flights of VSS Unity to conserve its cash reserves for the development of its next-generation Delta class of suborbital vehicles, which are intended to fly more frequently and at lower costs than Unity.
After Galactic 06, the company plans to fly Unity again on Galactic 07 in the second quarter of the year and potentially a Galactic 08 mission in mid-2024 before retiring VSS Unity and shifting resources into Delta-class vehicle development.
“With the production of our next-generation Delta-class ships underway, we look forward to expanding our flight capacity with testing expected to start next year and commercial service in 2026,” said Colglazier in the statement.
Virgin Galactic confirmed that Galactic 07 will take place in the second quarter and will carry a researcher along with private astronauts, but did not provide other details about the flight.
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