VSS Unity completes first NM glide flight
Test program will lead to eventual firing of the rocket engines
Virgin Galactic’s spaceship VSS Unity touched down on a runway in the New Mexico desert Friday, marking its first glide flight from Spaceport America as the company moves toward commercial operations.
The company announced the flight on social media and shared photos of the craft on the runway and members of the crew stationed far apart around the special carrier plane that ferries the smaller spaceship to high altitude.
After years of development and testing at Mojave Air & Space Port in Mojave, California, Virgin Galactic is close to starting actual operations at its futuristic terminal and hangar in southern New Mexico. The company has not set a date for the first commercial flights.
Under Virgin Galactic’s spaceflight system, the VSS
Unity passenger rocket is flown on the underbelly of a mothership to about 45,000 feet, at which point it detaches from the carrier plane and fires up its rockets to shoot
into space.
Friday’s test was a glider flight, where the Unity detaches from the mothership without igniting its motors to instead glide back down to Earth. As testing continues at the Spaceport, the Unity will move from glider flights to rocketpowered ones, although it’s unclear how soon that may happen.
A small number of test flights are needed before Virgin Galactic can take paying customers on the supersonic thrill rides to the lower reaches of space to experience a few minutes of weightlessness and a view of the Earth below. The suborbital flights will reach an altitude of at least 50 miles before the spaceship glides to a landing.
The company considers Friday’s flight a major achievement that has been in the works since the spaceship and carrier plane relocated to New Mexico in
February. The flight provided the first opportunity to test all the components required to fly the carrier aircraft and spaceship in glide configuration from their new home base. Officials will now be reviewing data gathered during the exercise so they can prepare for the next test flight.
More than 600 customers from around the world have put down firm deposits for flights, and Virgin Galactic has received about 8,000 online reservations of interest since the successful test flight into space in December 2018. Company officials expect that interest to surpass the company’s capacity for flights for the next few years.
The initial seats were sold at $250,000 apiece. Those who want to register interest online are paying a fully refundable deposit of $1,000.
Virgin Galactic said Friday that stringent operational protocols were in place during the glide flight at Spaceport America to ensure safety amid the coronavirus outbreak. The protocols included the use of masks, changes to the work areas and procedures to enforce social distancing.
Many employees have been working remotely during the pandemic, and Virgin Galactic President Mike Moses said in a recent blog post that the team has been busy with relief efforts. They’ve donated meals, masks, gloves and other medical supplies to communities and hospitals in New Mexico and California.
The company also has made donations of more than $60,000 in New Mexico and is working on developing oxygen hoods that could potentially help COVID-19 patients.
Virgin Galactic went public on the New York Stock Exchange last fall. Company officials are preparing to release their first quarter results Tuesday.