Virgin Galactic will launch its first commercial flight to the edge of space with a crew of six astronauts at 1500 UTC today.
If successful, Richard Branson’s space firm will join a small club of companies, along with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, that canThe VSS Unity, a rocket-powered spaceplane, will be strapped to a carrier plane for takeoff from Truth or Consequences in New Mexico. The mission, called Galactic 01, isn’t carrying space tourists, but rather two members of the Italian Air Force and a research engineer.
Once the carrier vehicle reaches an altitude of around 15 kilometres, it will release the VSS Unity, which will activate its rocket engine for a steep climb to 80 km above Earth, travelling at around three times the speed of sound. The crew will then experience five minutes of weightlessness before descending back to Earth.The 80 km mark has been criticised by some as not being truly beyond the atmosphere.
which maintains records for human space flight, classifies space as beginning at the Kármán line, 100 km above sea level. However, NASA and the US Air Force say that anyone who goes beyond 80 km counts as an astronaut.– but it is the first commercial operation. If the mission is successful, it will be followed by another flight in August this year, Galactic 02, which will have members of the public paying $450,000 each for the trip.
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