VIRGIN Galactic is finally ready to send its first paying clients into space.
The company’s first commercial trip, founded by billionaire Richard Branson, is a research mission with passengers paid for by the Italian Air Force and is scheduled for launch on Thursday.
However, future Virgin Galactic flights are planned to feature a variety of high-profile clients.
The trip will unfold in phases. It all starts at Virgin Galactic’s spaceport in New Mexico, where passengers board the VSS Unity, which is connected beneath the wing of a gigantic twin-fuselage mothership named VMS Eve.
VMS Eve will take off in the same manner as an airplane would, barreling down a runway before ascending to more than 40,000 feet.
It will release the VSS Unity after reaching its assigned altitude, which will then fire its rocket engine for around one minute as it swoops directly upward, vaulting for the stars.
The event will be live-streamed beginning at 11am ET on Thursday.
Follow our Virgin Galactic launch blog for news and live updates…
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Zero-gravity research experiments
The Italian Air Force and National Research Council chose a suite of 13 experiments for this suborbital journey.
It contains studies on how passengers’ pulse rates respond during acceleration, an effort to quantify cosmic radiation in the high atmosphere, and an assessment of how various biofuels behave in microgravity under varying pressures.
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Bringing in zero gravity
Researchers are particularly interested in the brief periods in which VSS Unity will be in zero gravity.
NASA and other organizations have frequently performed suborbital rocket tests, including Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin flights.
The weightless environment may provide scientists with a better fundamental knowledge of how something works — as well as disclose valuable data about a material’s behavior in space.
Suborbital flights can also be significantly less expensive than launching an experiment to the International Space Station, which necessitates much larger rockets and greater speeds.
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Speed is inevitable
If all goes as planned, the vehicle will travel more than 50 miles (80 kilometers) above Earth’s surface, which the US government deems the edge of outer space.
As it rockets skyward, the space aircraft will reach supersonic speeds.
At the height of its mission, the vehicle will experience weightlessness for a few minutes before entering freefall and gliding down to the spaceport for a runway landing.
The flight is estimated to last around an hour and a half.
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The trip takes place in phases
It all starts at Virgin Galactic’s spaceport in New Mexico, where passengers board the VSS Unity, which is connected beneath the wing of a gigantic twin-fuselage mothership named VMS Eve.
VMS Eve will take off in the same manner as an airplane would, barreling down a runway before ascending to more than 40,000 feet.
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Who will be onboard
Colonel Walter Villadei, who is also scheduled to fly to space on a future funded SpaceX mission, and Lieutenant Colonel Angelo Landolfi, a physician who has trained as a crew surgeon for Russian cosmonauts, will be aboard the expedition.
Pantaleone Carlucci, an engineer with Italy’s National Research Council, and Colin Bennett, a Virgin Galactic astronaut instructor who flew with Branson on the company’s well-publicized 2021 voyage, will also be on board.
Bennett’s task will be to evaluate the flight’s comfort and functionality, with the knowledge used to drive future adjustments to Virgin Galactic’s rocket-powered space aircraft, VSS Unity.
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Virgin Galactic to fly today
Virgin Galactic is finally ready to send its first paying clients into space.
The company’s first commercial trip, founded by billionaire Richard Branson, is a research mission with passengers paid for by the Italian Air Force and is scheduled for launch on Thursday.
