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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 fully crewed suborbital flight, aboard Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity is a major win for Branson's pioneering space-line and the company’s investment in space tourism. "It's one of the best ...
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).
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 ...
Jun. 6—It's almost time for VSS Unity to stand down. The spaceship's last commercial flight out of Spaceport America is Saturday. Then, it'll be all hands on deck for spaceflight company Virgin ...
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 ...
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 ...
The 11 July 2021 flight was the first time more than three people flew suborbitally on a spaceflight and the first time more than one passenger flew on a suborbital spaceflight, and Branson was the first founder of a spaceflight company to fly to space on his own company's craft, using the USAF/NASA definition of space as above 50 miles.