Branson to be on first suborbital space flight
Virgin Galactic announced that founder Richard Branson will make his long-anticipated flight to suborbital space in about a week, during a test flight of the Mojave-developed SpaceShipTwo from Spaceport America in New Mexico.
The window for Branson’s spaceflight is set to open on July 11, according to a Virgin Galactic announcement on Thursday.
He will be one of four mission specialists on board the rocket-powered spaceplane dubbed Unity, in addition to two pilots.
“It’s one thing to have a dream of making space more accessible to all; it’s another for an incredible team to collectively turn that dream into reality,” Branson said in the announcement. “As part of a remarkable crew of mission specialists,
I’m honored to help validate the journey our future astronauts will undertake and ensure we deliver the unique customer experience people expect from Virgin.”
The flight will be the first SpaceShipTwo mission to carry a full complement in the passenger compartment; all but one of the previous test flights carried only the two pilots. A February 2019 flight from the Mojave Air and Space Port was the only one to carry a third crew member, Virgin Galactic Chief Astronaut Instructor Beth Moses.
Moses will be part of the flight crew on this mission as well. She and Branson will be joined by Virgin Galactic’s Lead Operations Engineer Colin Bennett and Sirisha Bandla, Vice President of Government Affairs and Research Operations.
The crew will be occupied during the flight in evaluating cabin and customer experience. This includes Bandla operating an onboard science experiment from the University of Florida.
Branson’s flight is expected to have another first, the first time a Virgin Galactic flight has been live-streamed. Coverage is expected to begin at 6 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time on the company’s Facebook, YouTube and Twitter channels.
If all goes as planned, Branson would beat fellow billionaire space entrepreneur Jeff Bezos to the goal of reaching space himself.
The Amazon founder and former CEO is expected to fly to suborbital space on July 20 in the New Shepard spacecraft of his Blue Origin space company. He is scheduled to be joined by his brother, Mark; the winner of an auction who pledged $28 million for the seat; and Wally Funk, one of the “Mercury 13” women who trained to be astronauts during the early days of the US space program, but who were never given the chance to fly in space.
In the quest for billionaire bragging rights, Branson may get there first, but Bezos may be able to claim a higher space goal.
SpaceShipTwo clears the 50-mile altitude mark, or 264,000 feet, which the US military and other government agencies considers the edge of space, awarding astronaut wings to those who pass it.
New Shepard, however, is intended to clear 100 kilometers, or 328,000 feet, the internationally accepted boundary of space.
Branson announced his intent to be among the first passengers on his nascent spaceline Virgin Galactic about the same time he unveiled the company itself, during the Ansari X Prize-winning flights of Scaled Composites’ SpaceShipOne in Mojave in 2004.
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo spacecraft is based on the SpaceShipOne design, and built by Virgin Galactic at the Mojave Air and Space Port.
Last week, the company announced the Federal Aviation Administration had updated its commercial space launch permit to allow for carrying paying passengers on board its flights.
Company officials said at that time that three test flights remained before commercial flights would begin.