You won't be able to watch it live online, the company has said.

Update for 11:47 a.m.: The Virgin Galactic flight has landed. The names of the tourists have not yet been released; we will add more updates as they arrive.

Virgin Galactic plans to launch its third commercial spaceflight on Friday (Sept. 8), but you won't be able to watch the action live.

The company is targeting Friday morning for the liftoff of the Galactic 03 mission, which will send three paying customers aloft from Spaceport America in New Mexico. 

Liftoff will occur around the same as Virgin Galactic's previous missions, company officials told Space.com via email — so, about 10:30 a.m. EDT (1430 GMT). But Galactic 03 won't be livestreamed; we'll have to rely on updates that Virgin Galactic provides via social media.

In another departure from previous procedures, Virgin Galactic has not yet identified the three customers. Pretty much all we know is that they've been ticketholders for a long time.

"The three Galactic 03 crewmembers are the first of Virgin Galactic's group of 'Founder' astronauts — the first customers whose forward-thinking vision and early ticket purchases helped make the dream of regular commercial spaceflights a reality," Virgin Galactic wrote in a statement late last month.

"The Galactic 03 crew bought their tickets as early as 2005 and, since then, have been an active part of the company's vibrant Future Astronaut community," they added. (The ticket price back then was considerably cheaper than the current $450,000.)

The trio will fly aboard Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity space plane with Colin Bennett, one of the company's astronaut instructors. Unity will be piloted by Nicola Pecile and Michael Masucci.

Unity lifts off beneath the wings of VMS Eve, Virgin Galactic's carrier aircraft. Eve drops the space plane at an altitude of about 50,000 feet (15,000 meters), at which point Unity fires its rocket motor to get up to suborbital space. Both Unity and Eve come back to Earth for runway landings.

Galactic 03 is Virgin Galactic's third commercial spaceflight, after Galactic 02 on Aug. 10 and Galactic 01 on June 29. When test flights are included, VSS Unity has reached the final frontier a total of seven times to date.

Quelle: SC

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Update: 10.09.2023

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Virgin Galactic completes third commercial SpaceShipTwo flight

Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity suborbital spaceplane during the Galactic 03 flight Sept. 8. Credit: Virgin Galactic

WASHINGTON — Operating under a veil of secrecy reminiscent of a national security launch, Virgin Galactic performed its third commercial suborbital spaceflight Sept. 8 with three private astronauts on board.

The company’s VSS Unity spaceplane, attached to its VMS Eve mothership aircraft, took off from Spaceport America in New Mexico at 10:34 a.m. Eastern. Unity separated from the aircraft and reached a peak altitude of 88.6 kilometers before gliding back to a runway landing at the spaceport at 11:36 a.m. Eastern.

The “Galactic 03” flight was the third commercial mission for Unity, after the Galactic 01 research mission June 29 and the Galactic 02 private astronaut flight Aug. 10. It was also the fourth suborbital flight for Unity in a little more than three months, when including a test flight in late May.

Galactic 03 was commanded by Nicola Pecile with Michael Masucci as pilot and Beth Moses, the company’s chief astronaut instructor, in the cabin. As with the company’s Galactic 02 flight, the vehicle also carried three private astronauts.

However, unlike the previous two flights, the company did not disclose the identity of the private astronauts until after Unity landed. Traditionally, both government and private crewed missions, suborbital and orbital, flown from the U.S. have publicly named the full crews before launch, often weeks or months in advance. Virgin Galactic did not explain the secrecy surrounding the crew.

The company did identify the private astronauts after landing as Ken Baxter, Timothy Nash and Adrian Reynard. Baxter is a Las Vegas real estate entrepreneur who claims to have purchased the first SpaceShipTwo ticket from Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson in 2004. Nash is an entrepreneur and adventurer from South Africa who purchased his ticket in 2006. Reynard is a British engineer who started a business a half-century ago building race cars.

While the company did not identify the customers on board until after the flight, some of them has been talking about the flight in advance. Baxter, for example, has a websitewhere he provided updates about his flight preparations. That website also describes him as “America’s First Space Tourist,” a designation usually assigned to Dennis Tito, who paid for a seat on a Soyuz flight to the International Space Station 22 years ago.

Also unlike the two previous flights, Virgin Galactic did not provide a webcast of the Galactic 03 mission. Instead, it provided updates via social media, as it did on the May test flight.

“It’s an honor to see our ‘Galactic 03’ crew realize their lifelong dreams of spaceflight as they inspire our manifest of Future Astronauts,” said Michael Colglazier, chief executive of Virgin Galactic, using the company’s term for its customers. “Each successful flight shows how powerful and personally transformative space travel can be, and we look forward to scaling our operations and making space travel more accessible to people around the world.”

The company said its next flight, Galactic 04, is planned for early October, continuing a monthly cadence of missions.

Quelle: SN