Two years after its last mission, Virgin Galactic is back! today to make the first commercial flight into the atmosphere. VSS Unity rocket will send four lucky people into space, as well as the two pilots needed to fly. But who is involved in this landmark mission?
Upon takeoff at 11 a.m. EDT, the VSS Unity rocket will be mounted beneath the wing of a giant mother ship which will fly it to a height at an altitude of 50,000 feet. There, it will fall off the mothership and launch into an area near space at Mach 3.
train ticket costs from 200,000 to 450,000 dollars according to Al-Jazera, all of which were snapped up by Italian officials, the site reported. Along with pilots and an instructor from Virgin Galactic, VSS Unity will carry Angelo Landolfi and Walter Villadei, two senior members of the Italian air force, and Pantaleone Carlucci, an engineer from the National Research Council. Italian family, who will be proceed a rigorous set of experiments within that limited time, as The Verge reports:
“The crew will conduct a number of suborbital science experiments during the 90-minute flight, such as testing the cosmic radiation measuring instrument and studying different materials under microgravity conditions. . The capsule of the SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity vehicle – the rocket-powered spacecraft that holds Virgin Galactic’s passengers – will be converted into a suborbital science laboratory suitable for conducting experiments.”
The mission will be available for viewing here. If successful, Virgin Galactic will begin competing with Jeff Bezos-backed Blue Origin, which has been offering private flights into space for several years now. However, following an incident with one of its rockets last September, the organization halted the launches while investigating the cause.
