Opinion: Richard Branson s disappointing space jaunt msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Xinhua | Updated: 2021-07-11 07:22 Share CLOSE Virgin Galactic s passenger rocket plane, the VSS Unity, is seen outside its hangar in a still image from undated handout video taken at Spaceport America near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, US.[Photo/Agencies]
WASHINGTON Virgin Galactic is scheduled to launch its first fully crewed flight of its space plane Unity on Sunday, a giant leap toward commercial suborbital spaceflight.
The mission, dubbed Unity 22, will be the 22nd flight test for the company s spacecraft VSS Unity, and its fourth crewed spaceflight.
It will also be the first to carry a full crew of two pilots and four mission specialists in the cabin, including founder of Virgin Galactic Richard Branson, who will be testing the private astronaut experience.
2021-07-10 22:05:26 GMT2021-07-11 06:05:26(Beijing Time) Xinhua English
WASHINGTON, July 10 (Xinhua) Virgin Galactic is scheduled to launch its first fully crewed flight of its space plane Unity on Sunday, a giant leap toward commercial suborbital spaceflight.
The mission, dubbed Unity 22, will be the 22nd flight test for the company s spacecraft VSS Unity, and its fourth crewed spaceflight.
It will also be the first to carry a full crew of two pilots and four mission specialists in the cabin, including founder of Virgin Galactic Richard Branson, who will be testing the private astronaut experience.
The crew will take off from the company s homeport of Spaceport America in New Mexico.
Battle of the billionaires: Richard Branson’s rocket will fly longer, but Jeff Bezos’ will go higher
Battle of the billionaires: Richard Branson’s rocket will fly longer, but Jeff Bezos’ will go higher
Branson is due to take off Sunday from New Mexico, launching with two pilots and three other employees aboard a rocket plane carried aloft by a double-fuselage aircraft.
This combination of 2019 and 2016 file photos shows Jeff Bezos with a model of Blue Origin s Blue Moon lunar lander in Washington, left, and Richard Branson with Virgin Galactic s SpaceShipTwo space tourism rocket in Mojave, Calif. The two billionaires are putting everything on the line in July 2021 to ride their own rockets into space.(Patrick Semansky)
Billionaire Race: Branson Set to Be First to Visit Space
The URL has been copied to your clipboard
0:00
0:05:28
0:00
Pop-out player
British billionaire Richard Branson is set to launch into space on Sunday on a rocket plane built by the space
tourism company he created.
The 70-year-old Branson will join two pilots and three other “
mission specialists” on the flight. Virgin Galactic the business Branson started in 2004 aims to fly private citizens to the edge of space. The trips are designed to permit passengers to experience three to four minutes of weightlessness and observe the
curvature of Earth.
Virgin Galactic’s experience takes place in a space plane called VSS Unity. A large carrier airplane, called VMS Eve, carries the space plane to 15,000 meters and then releases it. VSS Unity then uses rocket power to fly to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere.