Virgin Galactic aborts first crewed flight of its rocket-powered spaceship in New Mexico businessinsider.in - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from businessinsider.in Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Virgin Galactic
Virgin Galactic is poised to launch the SpaceShipTwo as early as Saturday on a milestone powered flight test following a month-long delay due to COVID-19 restrictions in New Mexico. The company hopes to send a pair of astronauts, CJ Sturckow and Dave Mackay, aboard the
VSS Unity on a suborbital trip, marking the spaceplane’s third crewed test mission. What’s more, this launch will be the first time that a crewed spaceflight has taken off from New Mexico soil making it only the third American state to actually launch spacecraft overall, behind California and Florida.
“We anticipate that this upcoming flight will provide some of the data for us to close out our final two verification reports required by the FAA to remove the remaining proviso in our current commercial spaceflight license,” Sturkow said in a statement. “Upon successful completion of this flight, and data review, we will proceed to the next phase of testing, where we will fly four mission