Virgin Galactic successfully completed its third commercial SpaceShipTwo flight on September 8 with three private astronauts aboard, operating under a veil of secrecy reminiscent of a national security launch.
At 10:34 a.m. Eastern, the VSS Unity spaceplane and VMS Eve mothership aircraft of the company launched from Spaceport America in New Mexico. Unity descended to a maximum altitude of 88.6 kilometers after separating from the aircraft and gliding back to the runway at the spaceport at 11:36 a.m. Eastern.
After the Galactic 01 research mission on June 29 and the Galactic 02 private astronaut flight on August 10, the “Galactic 03” flight was Unity’s third commercial mission. Galactic 03 was piloted by Michael Masucci, Nicola Pecile, and Beth Moses, the company’s chief astronaut instructor, was in the cabin. It was also Unity’s fourth suborbital flight in a little over three months, including a test flight in late May. Similarly as with the organization’s Cosmic 02 flight, the vehicle additionally conveyed three confidential space explorers.
However, in contrast to the two previous flights, the company did not reveal the private astronauts’ identities until Unity landed. Generally, both government and confidential ran missions, suborbital and orbital, flown from the U.S. have freely named the full groups before send off, frequently weeks or months ahead of time. The crew’s secrecy was not explained by Virgin Galactic.
After the landing, the company did identify the private astronauts as Adrian Reynard, Timothy Nash, and Ken Baxter. Baxter is a Las Vegas land business person who professes to have bought the main SpaceShipTwo ticket from Virgin Cosmic pioneer Richard Branson in 2004. Nash is a business person and globe-trotter from South Africa who bought his ticket in 2006. Reynard is an English designer who began a business 50 years prior building race vehicles.
While the organization didn’t distinguish the clients on board until after the flight, some of them has been discussing the trip ahead of time. For instance, Baxter has a website on which he posts updates on his flight preparations. That site likewise depicts him as “America’s Most memorable Space Traveler,” an assignment generally relegated to Dennis Tito, who paid for a seat on a Soyuz trip to the Worldwide Space Station a long time back.
Additionally, in contrast to the two previous flights, Virgin Galactic did not offer a webcast of the Galactic 03 mission. Instead, it updated via social media, just like it did on the test flight in May.
Michael Colglazier, Virgin Galactic’s chief executive, referred to the company’s clients as “Future Astronauts,” and he said, “It’s an honor to see our “Galactic 03″ crew realize their lifelong dreams of spaceflight.” Each effective flight shows how strong and actually groundbreaking space travel can be, and we anticipate scaling our activities and making space go more available to individuals all over the planet.”
Galactic 04, the company said, is scheduled for early October and will continue the monthly mission cadence.
In trading on September 8, shares of Virgin Galactic ended at $2.29, a decrease of 2.1%.