Virgin Galactic is working with regulators to investigate an issue with an alignment pin that was discovered after the last crewed suborbital flight in January. During post-flight reviews, Virgin said it discovered that an alignment pin had detached from VMS Eve, the aircraft that carries the suborbital space plane to altitude. The company notified the U.S. Federal Administration of the anomaly, and the two are conducting a review, which is standard procedure for issues that arise during a commercial launch.
Elon Musk recently revealed that the explosion of the Starship’s upper stage this past November during its second test flight was caused by a propellant dump gone wrong. Despite this setback, the incident will not impact the megarocket’s upcoming scheduled flight in February, according to the SpaceX CEO.
In an effort to cut cost for the sake of the development of its next generation spaceplane, Virgin Galactic will lay off a number of its employees and save on expenses in hopes of bringing in future profits from its commercial flights.
After landing back to Earth from Virgin Galactic’s latest suborbital flight, planetary scientist Alan Stern and science communicator Kellie Gerardi received a ton of text messages from other researchers asking, “How do I get to do that?”