After completing four captive carry test flights, Virgin Galactic conducted the first-free flight drop test of its second SpaceShipTwo, VSS Unity. The test took place on Saturday, December 3rd over California’s Mojave Desert. “Today, VSS Unity was piloted by Mark Stucky and Dave Mackay, with pilots Mike Masucci and Todd Ericsson as well as […]
Virgin Galactic Press Release: Dec 03, 2015 LAUNCHERONE PROGRAM TO USE DEDICATED 747-400 AIRCRAFT TO RESPONSIVELY AIR-LAUNCH SMALL SATELLITE CUSTOMER PAYLOADS San Antonio, TX – December 3, 2015 – Virgin Galactic introduced the newest addition to its fleet of vehicles today as part of a technical update on its LauncherOne small satellite launch service. The […]
Virgin Galactic Press Release, Comments Follow VIRGIN GALACTIC ANNOUNCES SIGNIFICANT PROGRESS WITH LAUNCHERONE ROCKET PROPULSION IN-HOUSE TEAM ACHIEVES KEY MILESTONES IN STEADY-STATE TESTING OF MAIN STAGE AND UPPER STAGE LIQUID ENGINES MOJAVE, California – September 28, 2015 – Successful test firings of key propulsion components marked the latest sign of progress for Virgin Galactic’s dedicated small […]
Image Credit: OneWeb OneWeb has announced what is being described as the largest single launch order ever placed. The order, which will eventually cover some 900 of its planned fleet of broadband internet satellites in Low Earth Orbit, will be split between the Arianespace marketed version of the Soyuz booster, and Virgin Galactic’s much smaller LauncherOne, which is under development. […]
LauncherOne Factory Launch / Image Credit : Virgin Galactic Virgin Galactic announced on Thursday that its is opening a dedicate factory in Long Beach, California for producing the LauncherOne small booster. Here is an excerpt from the press release, absent the obligatory statements from local officials:: LONG BEACH, Calif. – February 12, 2015 – Virgin […]
Only two days in to an investigation which was expected to take up to a year, the National Safety Transportation Board team looking in to Friday’s Virgin Galactic crash at the Mojave spaceport has made a surprising discovery, one which overturns almost all of the early assumptions about what led to the disaster. Speaking at […]
Two days after Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo broke up in the skies over the Mojave Desert, the National Transportation Safety Board “go team” is on site. B Roll video release of the accident site is beginning to reveal some aspects of the disaster which took the life of Scale Composites test pilot Michael Alsbury, badly injured […]
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground In the second major disaster to strike commercial space in the same week, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo broke up in the air above the Mojave desert shortly after igniting its new plastic compound based hybrid motor in what would have been its first powered test flight. […]
Coming together. Image Credit: XCOR Aerospace Coming on the heels of the 10th anniversary lamentation/celebration of SpaceShipOne’s winning the Ansari XPRIZE, an event which saw more than a little criticism aimed at Virgin Galactic for its frequent delays with SpaceShipTwo, the other company racing to introduce a commercial suborbital spaceplane, XCOR, announced major progress in […]
Still Working…Still Waiting. Image Credit: Virgin Galactic Saturday, October 4th, 2014 was the ten year anniversary of the SpaceShipOne’s winning the Ansari X-Prize, a feat which built on its legacy of becoming the first privately funded, piloted “rocket” to pass the 62.5 mile high Karman line and go into suborbital space. Ten years later, on […]
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