Success: Virgin Galactic spaceship reaches suborbit
60 seconds of rocket burn, straight into space.
The space tourism company's latest SpaceShipTwo vehicle, known as VSS Unity, has made two crewed test flights to suborbital space, first in December 2018 and then again in February 2019.
Virgin Galactic is now preparing for its next suborbital test flight, which could launch as soon as Oct. 22, CNBC reported, citing documents filed last week with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.
A privately developed space plane called SpaceShipOne made three successful suborbital spaceflights with a pilot on board in 2004, winning the $10 million Ansari X Prize in the process. Virgin Galactic was founded that same year with the aim of bringing tourists into space, using the successor SpaceShipTwo spacecraft. The company initially hoped to fly people within a few years, but several delays have ensued, including one that followed a 2014 test-flight crash that killed one pilot.
Virgin Galactic won't be the first outfit to ferry private citizens into space. NASA flew a handful of people to orbit who were not government astronauts during the early days of the space shuttle program, under the payload specialist program. Charlie Walker flew on three space shuttle missions in 1984 and 1985 as a payload specialist for McDonnell Douglas, who paid $40,000 USD for each flight, according to a 2004 NASA interview with Walker. Walker is usually said to be the first non-government individual to reach space.
The first international commercial spaceflight was in August 1989, which saw Japanese journalist Toyohiro Akiyama fly on a Soyuz spacecraft under a deal between the Tokyo Broadcasting System and the Soviet Union. Dennis Tito was the first person to fund his own flight to space, visiting the International Space Station for about a week in 2001 on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. A handful of other people followed Tito's lead, also paying their way to the space station aboard a Soyuz.
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