Tag: Virgin Galactic

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Virgin Galactic shows off Under Armour spacewear

Virgin Galactic spacewear
Virgin Galactic’s billionaire founder, Richard Branson, joins the younger set in modeling the line of spacewear created in partnership with Under Armour. (Virgin Galactic Photo / Stephen Counts)

It’s a bit of a stretch to call them spacesuits, but the “spacewear” clothing line unveiled today by Virgin Galactic and Under Armour looks comfortable enough to wear even if you’re not rocketing to the edge of space.

The Under Armour clothing line — which includes a base layer, a spacesuit that’s really a beefed-up flight suit, and zippered flight boots — made its debut at a New York runway show, and will get its space premiere during test flights for Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane.

Next year, Virgin Galactic’s customers are due to wear the custom-made space duds when they climb on board for suborbital trips past the 50-mile space milestone at Spaceport America in New Mexico.

“I love the way the spacewear looks, and I love the way it feels,” Virgin Galactic’s billionaire founder, Richard Branson, said in a news release. “I also love the fact that the next time I put it on, I will be on my way to space.”

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Boeing to invest $20M in Virgin Galactic

Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity
Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity fires its rocket motor to head to the edge of space in 2018. (Virgin Galactic Photo)

Boeing says it’s planning to invest $20 million in Virgin Galactic once it goes public, potentially unlocking a new level of synergy for commercial space travel.

For Virgin Galactic, the deal will provide an extra dose of cash — but also access to Boeing’s decades of expertise in providing aerospace products and services.

In return, Boeing will have an inside track to the market for commercial space travel — which is part of CEO Dennis Muilenburg’s vision for a continuum of aerospace transportation. “Space tourism, space factories … that whole ecosystem is evolving, and we’ll be deeply involved in the transportation system that will enable access,” Muilenburg said last October at the GeekWire Summit.

Brian Schettler, senior managing director of Boeing HorizonX Ventures, emphasized that perspective in today’s announcement of the investment.

“Boeing’s strategic investment facilitates our effort to drive the commercialization of space and broaden consumer access to safe, efficient and environmentally responsible new forms of transportation,” Schettler said. “Our work with Virgin Galactic, and others, will help unlock the future of space travel and high-speed mobility.”

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NASA picks 25 space technologies for testing

Suborbital rocket ships
Three of the vehicles to be used for testing space technologies are Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane, Blue Origin’s New Shepard spaceship and Masten Space Systems’ lander vehicle. (Virgin Galactic / Blue Origin / Masten via NASA)

NASA’s Flight Opportunities program has selected 25 promising space technologies for testing aboard aircraft, high-altitude balloons and suborbital rocket ships — including Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft.

Blue Origin, the space venture created by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and headquartered in Kent, Wash., will be involved in testing 11 of the technologies. The company has been providing flights for suborbital space experiments since 2016 at its West Texas spaceport.

The latest projects were selected as part of NASA’s Tech Flights solicitation. Awardees typically receive a grant or enter into a cost-sharing agreement through which they can select a commercial flight provider that meets the requirements for their payload.

“With vibrant and growing interest in exploration and commercial space across the country, our goal with these selections is to support innovators from industry and academia who are using rapid and affordable commercial opportunities to test their technologies in space,” Christopher Baker, program executive for Flight Opportunities at NASA Headquarters, said in a news release.

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Virgin Galactic begins its big move to New Mexico

Spaceport America
Spaceport America is becoming the true base of operations for Virgin Galactic. (Virgin Galactic Photo)

After two successful crewed test flights to a 50-mile-high space milestone, Virgin Galactic says it’s shifting its operations from California to New Mexico’s Spaceport America — lock, stock and spaceship.

Virgin Galactic’s billionaire founder, Richard Branson, made the announcement in Santa Fe today, in the company of New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and other state dignitaries. The company said the transfer is beginning immediately and will continue over the summer, to minimize the disruption for the school-age children of employees.

More than 100 staff members are affected by the move, Virgin Galactic said in a news release.

The shift follows through on a promise that Virgin Galactic made more than a decade ago, in exchange for New Mexico’s pledge to put state funds toward a project that ended up costing more than $200 million.

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SpaceShipTwo carries three people for the first time

SpaceShipTwo Unity
The SpaceShipTwo rocket plane known as VSS Unity touches down at California’s Mojave Air and Space Port after the first suborbital space test flight to have three people aboard. (Virgin Galactic Photo)

Virgin Galactic followed up on last December’s first SpaceShipTwo flight past the 50-mile space milestone by sending up its first non-pilot on today’s test flight.

The crew member who accompanied the two pilots was Beth Moses, Virgin Galactic’s chief astronaut instructor (and wife of the company’s president, Mike Moses).

Today’s test sent the SpaceShipTwo rocket plane, VSS Unity, to a height of 55.87 miles (89.9 kilometers), Virgin Galactic said.

The flight followed Virgin Galactic’s usual profile: Unity was slung beneath its WhiteKnightTwo carrier airplane, VMS Eve, for takeoff from California’s Mojave Air and Space Port. At an altitude of about 45,000 feet, Unity was released into the air and fired its hybrid rocket engine for a minute, screaming toward the black sky of space at a top speed of Mach 3.04.

After a zero-gravity coast at the top of the ride, Unity glided back to the airport for an airplane-like landing. Eve made its own landing minutes later.

It was Unity’s fifth supersonic test flight, setting the stage for what could be the start of commercial operations at Spaceport America in New Mexico later this year.

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Virgin Galactic test pilots get astronaut wings

Astronaut wings ceremony
Wearing their astronaut wings, SpaceShipTwo test pilots Rick Sturckow and Mark Stucky face the cameras as Virgin Galactic’s billionaire founder, Richard Branson, flashes a thumbs-up sign. (FAA / Virgin Galactic Photo)

Two Virgin Galactic test pilots are now wearing the first commercial astronaut wings to be awarded since SpaceShipOne’s historic spaceflights in 2004.

Last December’s test flight, piloted by Mark “Forger” Stucky and Rick “CJ” Sturckow in the SpaceShipTwo Unity rocket plane, was nearly as historic. It rose to an altitude of 51.4 miles, exceeding the 50-mile benchmark that’s used by the U.S. military and the Federal Aviation Administration for conferring astronaut wings.

Stucky and Sturckow received their wings today during a ceremony at the U.S. Department of Transportation’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. Later in the day, the rocket motor that powered the pair past the milestone was officially turned over to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum for exhibit.

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Virgin Galactic makes a deal for spacesuits

Kevin Plank and Richard Branson
Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank and Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson share a moment with Nick Cienski, Under Armour’s lead spacesuit designer. (Under Armour Photo)

Virgin Galactic’s billionaire founder, Richard Branson, today took the wraps off a partnership with Under Armour to create the spacesuit and the footwear that he could well be wearing on a SpaceShipTwo suborbital space trip within a few months.

Under Armour will also create a performance training program for Virgin Galactic’s hundreds of customers — including the opportunity to train at Under Armour’s lab in Portland, Ore.

The actual apparel design and other details will have to wait for a future reveal. But Branson, ever the optimist, suggested that the kickoff for Virgin Galactic’s commercial space operation at Spaceport America in New Mexico is coming soon.

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What’s next for commercial spaceflight? Passengers

Richard Branson and astronauts
Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson, center, celebrates this week’s successful test flight of VSS Unity with test pilots Rick “CJ” Sturckow at left and Mark “Forger” Stucky at right. Branson says he’ll be Unity’s first commercial passenger. (Virgin Galactic / Quasar Media Photo)

MOJAVE, Calif. — The first suborbital space passenger is less likely to be a billionaire like Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson or Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos, and more likely to be an as-yet-unnamed employee at one of their companies.

That’s despite Branson’s promise, reiterated in the wake of Dec. 13’s successful test flight past the 50-mile altitude mark, that he’d be the first commercial passenger on Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity within the next few months.

The word “passenger” is key: We’re not talking about the people who are actually flying the spacecraft, such as the two test pilots who were at Unity’s controls this week. Rather, we’re talking about folks who will be seated in Virgin Galactic’s Unity rocket plane, behind the pilots, or in Blue Origin’s New Shepard crew capsule.

“Suborbital” is key as well: There have already been a good number of passengers on orbital spacecraft, going back to the days of Russia’s Mir space station in the 1990s. Seven people have paid their own way for trips to the International Space Station, with the official status of spaceflight participants. Looking ahead, passengers may get their chance to purchase seats on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon or Boeing’s Starliner space capsule.

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Virgin Galactic plane takes 51-mile-high spaceflight

Virgin Galactic spaceflight
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipOne rocket plane, dubbed VSS Unity, fires its hybrid rocket motor for a 51-mile-high flight. (MarsScientific.com / Trumbull Studios)

MOJAVE, Calif. — Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane, dubbed VSS Unity, has become the first privately funded vehicle in 14 years to carry people to the edge of space — depending on how you define space.

“I’m not allowed to say this, but hopefully we’re going to space today!” Virgin Galactic’s billionaire founder, Richard Branson, said just after the flight took off from California’s Mojave Air and Space Port today.

Over the course of almost an hour, SpaceShipTwo and its White Knight Two mothership rose to a launch altitude of about 43,000 feet. Just before 8 a.m.. PT, the rocket plane was dropped from White Knight Two’s underbelly and lit up its own hybrid rocket motor.

The rocket blasted for 60 seconds, sending Unity upward at supersonic speeds as high as Mach 2.9 and powering test pilots Mark “Forger” Stucky and Rick “CJ” Sturckow to a height of 271,268 feet. That translates to 51.4 miles, or 82.6 kilometers.

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Virgin Galactic aims for space — but how high?

Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo
Virgin Galactic is getting VSS Unity ready for a crucial series of test flights. (Virgin Galactic Photo)

Virgin Galactic says it’s beginning a series of SpaceShipTwo test flights that could cross the edge of the space frontier as early as Dec. 13 — amid a debate over where exactly that edge kicks in.

The company has been flight-testing its VSS Unity rocket plane for more than two years, with its most recent rocket-powered flight rising to a height of 32 miles (52 kilometers) in July. The plan for the next stage of testing at California’s Mojave Air and Space Port was laid out in a statement issued today.

“During this phase of the flight program we will be expanding the envelope for altitude, air speed, loads and thermal heating,” Virgin Galactic said. “We also plan to burn the rocket motor for durations which will see our pilots and spaceship reach space for the first time. Although this could happen as soon as Thursday morning, the nature of flight test means that it may take us a little longer to get to that milestone.”

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