[imagesource:virgingalactic]

Here we go again. Virgin Galactic will be taking passengers and crew on a 90-minute suborbital ride this afternoon as the ‘spaceplane’ blasts them up to about 80km above the New Mexico desert.

Two Italian air force officers and an aerospace engineer from the National Research Council of Italy are scheduled to join a Virgin Galactic instructor and two pilots.

Virgin Galactic uses a “mothership” aircraft with two pilots that takes off from a runway, gains high altitude, and then deploys the rocket-powered VSS Unity that soars into space at nearly Mach 3 (three times the speed of sound), before gliding back to Earth. At least that’s the plan.

Passengers will get to experience a few minutes of weightlessness and catch a glimpse of the planet’s curvature during their trip.

Virgin Galactic has sold approximately 800 tickets for its commercial flights, with movie stars and other celebrities among the first to snap up seats. However, the company’s programme suffered a disaster in 2014 when a spaceplane on a test flight broke apart midair, killing the co-pilot and seriously injuring the pilot.

Even Jeff Bezos is currently grounded after an accident during an unmanned flight in September 2022. Today’s scheduled launch also comes shortly after Branson’s Virgin Orbit announced it was ceasing operations following a mission failure in the United Kingdom.

Their LauncherOne rocket failed to reach orbit and saw its payload of US and UK spy satellites dive into the ocean. All told, not a good time for rocketeers. Among others.

Save the date for #Galactic01! 📅

Join us on June 29 to see where curiosity can take us all, with our first scientific research mission crewed by the @ItalianAirForce & @CNRsocial_.

Learn more and sign up for livestream updates → https://t.co/GPhFMgZgbb pic.twitter.com/j8yFJdEJkH

— Virgin Galactic (@virgingalactic) June 26, 2023

The launch can be watched live on their YouTube channel below and is supposed to go swooshing into space at 17:00 SA time.

Al Jazeera reports that the company’s next scheduled commercial space flight – Galactic 02 – is planned for August, and monthly flights to space are expected to be rolled out following that launch. It may seem macabre, but due to recent events, there’s sure to be a great deal of interest in this launch.

Godspeed to those brave men in their incredible flying machines.

[source:aljazeera]