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Virgin Galactic Unity 25 was a sub-orbital spaceflight by Virgin Galactic that took place on 25 May 2023. The flight used their SpaceShipTwo spaceplane VSS Unity. The crew consisted of six Virgin Galactic employees. Unity 25 was the first spaceflight for the company since Unity 22 in 2021, when founder Richard Branson flew to space. [1]
The first operational flight of Unity (defined as the first flight flying passengers that were not Virgin Galactic employees) was Galactic 01 on 29 June 2023. The flights of VSS Unity ended mid-2024 to focus the effort on the next generation Delta-class vehicles, expected for 2025–26.
By March 2011, Virgin Galactic had submitted SpaceShipTwo as a reusable launch vehicle for carrying research payloads in response to NASA's suborbital reusable launch vehicle (sRLV) solicitation, which was a part of the agency's Flight Opportunities Program. Virgin projected research flights might reach a peak altitude of 110 km (68 mi).
Jul. 12—Richard Branson on Sunday became the first billionaire to fly to the edge of space and back, riding aboard his own Virgin Galactic spacecraft in a suborbital flight that launched from ...
Although not a Virgin Galactic launcher, SpaceShipOne was the direct predecessor of the Virgin Galactic vehicles, and served to demonstrate the feasibility of the concept. SpaceShipOne was an experimental air-launched rocket-powered aircraft with sub-orbital spaceflight capability at speeds of up to 3,000 ft/s (900 m/s), using a hybrid rocket ...
The rollout of the gleaming craft, dubbed Virgin Space Ship Unity, marks Branson?s return to a race among rival billionaire entrepreneurs.
The space tourism company said that mission took off from and returned to Spaceport America in New Mexico on Saturday. It marked Virgin's VSS Unity spaceplane's final commercial flight as the ...
Virgin Galactic's suborbital spacecraft are air launched from beneath a carrier airplane known as White Knight Two. Virgin Galactic's maiden spaceflight occurred in 2018 with its VSS Unity spaceship. [3] Branson had originally hoped to see a maiden spaceflight by 2010, [4] but the date was delayed, primarily due to the October 2014 crash of VSS ...