Virgin Galactic Made Its 5th Test Flight Into Space
The company Virgin Galactic successfully carried out the fifth test space flight.
The VMS Eve mother ship took off from the runway at Spaceport America in New Mexico at 11:15 am ET. The takeoff came more than an hour later than the schedule provided by Virgin Galactic the day before, but the company did not disclose the reason for the delay.
The VSS Unity was dropped by a carrier aircraft at 12:23 ET after which it turned on its hybrid rocket engine and climbed into “near space”, and then performed a descent and landed on the runway of the spaceport “America”. The entire solo flight took VSS Unity about 15 minutes. Virgin Galactic said it achieved a maximum altitude of 87.2 km and a top speed of Mach 2.94 during testing.
On board the Unity 25 were two pilots, Mike Masucci and CJ Sturkow. Four other employees of the company – Beth Moses, Luke Mays, Jamila Gilbert and Christopher Hugh – were in the passenger seats. The crew and passengers of VSS Unity at the maximum point of ascent were in weightlessness for several minutes and saw the Earth from space.
The Unity 25 mission is the final test flight before the company’s first commercial flight in late June. In the future, the company hopes to make such flights approximately every month.
