SpaceShipTwo

The US company Virgin Galactic has completed the first piloted free flight of SpaceShipTwo, named the VSS Enterprise, which is the world’s first commercial manned space flight system. The spaceship was released from its mother ship at an altitude of 45,000 ft (13,700 metres).

The VSS Enterprise achieved manned free flight from over 45,000 ft and successfully glides to land at Mojave Air and Spaceport. During its first flight, the spaceship was piloted by Pete Siebold and was assisted by Mike Alsbury. The two main goals of the flight were to carry out a clean release of the spaceship from its mother ship and for the pilots to free fly and glide back and land at Mojave Air and Spaceport in California.

The other objectives of the flight including verification that all systems worked prior and following the clean release of enterprise; initial evaluation of handling and stall characteristics; qualitative evaluation of stability and control of SS2 against predictions from design and simulation work; verification of performance by evaluating the lift-to-drag ratio of the spaceship during glide flight; practise a landing approach at altitude and finally descend and land, etc were successfully completed. Virgin Galactic is now on the way to becoming the world’s first commercial space line with 370 customers.