Virgin Galactic successfully completes inaugural commercial spaceflight
Brady Knox
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After nearly two decades of planning, Virgin Galactic completed its first commercial space flight.
Galactic 01 took off from Spaceport America, New Mexico, on Thursday. The three crew members for the inaugural flight were from the Italian Air Force and the National Research Center of Italy. The team conducted microgravity research on the flight, which carried 13 research payloads.
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“Today, our team successfully flew six people and more than a dozen research payloads to space in VSS Unity, our unique, suborbital science lab,” Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said. “This historic flight was our first commercial flight and our first dedicated commercial research mission — ushering in a new era of repeatable and reliable access to space for private passengers and researchers.”
He continued, “Galactic 02, our first spaceflight with private astronauts, is planned for August, and we expect VSS Unity to continue with monthly space missions while we simultaneously work to scale our future spaceship fleet for a global audience.”
The spacecraft reached a top speed of Mach 2.88 during the flight and reached an altitude of 44,500 feet. Galactic 01 was the 26th flight and sixth space flight undertaken by the company.
Wealthy customers have been clamoring for years to get their hands on the tickets, which have been on sale since 2005, AFP reported. The hundreds of interested customers have resulted in a huge backlog, Virgin Galactic spokesman Jeff Michaels told the Washington Examiner. He said that the company has sold about 800 tickets.
With the first commercial space flight out of the way, Virgin Galactic will now move to schedule monthly flights, starting in August with Galactic 02.
Each commercial flight can carry four passengers. The company plans for each flight to last about 90 minutes. The flight begins when the shuttle, attached to a plane, takes off from a runway and is flown to an altitude of roughly 50,000 feet. The shuttle then detaches from the “mothership,” and the rocket engine ignites, sending it into space at nearly 3 1/2 times the speed of sound.
Galactic 01 fell short of both the planned max speed and distance but otherwise appeared to go according to plan.
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After 60 seconds, passengers can unbuckle and experience zero gravity as the shuttle briefly floats in space. The craft then glides back down to Earth and lands on the runway it took off from.
Virgin Galactic doesn’t have a monopoly on commercial spaceflight, however. Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin has also dipped into the commercial spaceflight business, beating the company to the first commercial space flight. However, tickets for Blue Origin are far more expensive, costing roughly $1.25 million each, according to Spaceflight Now.