On Sunday, British billionaire Richard Branson launched VSS Unity 22 into space from Spaceport America in New Mexico. Due to a tropical storm, the test flight was delayed by one and a half hours, but all six members of the crew are ready for their journey to the edge of space.
A crew member who is Indian
Branson will be accompanied by Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci, who will be in charge of the spacecraft's activation and shutdown. According to Reuters, they will also ‘activate the vehicle's "feathered" tail movement' for the spacecraft's re-entry into the Earth.
Branson will be accompanied aboard VSS Unity by Beth Moses, the company's chief astronaut instructor, Colin Bennett, Virgin Galactic's senior operations engineer, and research operations and government affairs vice president Sirisha Bandla.
Branson and six other Virgin Galactic Holding Inc personnel will take out from a base in New Mexico aboard a Virgin Galactic vehicle that will soar 80 kilometers above the state in what is being hailed as the start of a new age of space travel. The VSS Unity rocket plane will be the 22nd test flight of Virgin Galactic Holding Inc's SpaceShipTwo system. It's also the crew's fourth mission outside Earth's atmosphere.
Richard Branson will be one of two pilots and four "mission specialists" aboard the VSS Unity. The launch, which was scheduled to take off from New Mexico's state-owned Spaceport of America in the town of Truth or Consequences, has been postponed due to overnight thunderstorms. Due to storm-related concerns, Virgin Galactic did not launch its rocket plane, the business said news agency Reuters.
At a height of 50,000 feet, VSS Unity, which is coupled to the specially developed twin-fuselage carrier jet VMS Eve (named after the billionaire's late mother), will disconnect. Following that, Unity's rocket engine will launch the spaceplane into orbit at a height of 55 miles, where the crew will experience 4 minutes of microgravity. When the craft reaches the top of its rise, it will switch to re-entry mode and land on the spaceport's runway.
The flight will take about 90 minutes to complete from takeoff to landing.
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, will be present at Spaceport America for the test flight.
Streaming in real-time
Live streaming of the event will be available for viewers at http://www.virgingalactic.com/, and the event will also be aired simultaneously on Virgin Galactic's Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook channels, according to Virgin Atlantic's official Twitter handle.
