WASHINGTON — Virgin Galactic continued its monthly cadence of economic suborbital spaceflights Oct. 6, carrying three customers that included the primary person from Pakistan to go to space.
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo vehicle, VSS Unity, took off from Spaceport America attached to its VMS Eve mothership at 11:28 a.m. Eastern. VSS Unity released from the plane at 12:10 p.m. Eastern, flying to an apogee of 87.5 kilometers before gliding back to a runway landing on the spaceport.
As with the previous flight, Galactic 03 on Sept. 8, Virgin Galactic didn’t provide a live broadcast, limiting itself to social media updates. Those updates themselves were published on a time delay: one post announcing ignition of the vehicle’s hybrid rocket motor was published at the very least 12 minutes after ignition, based on the timestamps in the photographs included with the post.
On board VSS Unity were three customers: Ron Rosano, Treavor Beattie and Namira Salim. The corporate didn’t release the purchasers’ names prematurely of the flight, but all three disclosed their participation in the times leading as much as the flight.
Rosano is an American who’s involved in space education and in addition works for a property management company. Beattie is a British promoting executive and film producer who, in response to a Virgin Galactic biography, accompanied company founder Richard Branson to a SpaceShipOne flight in 2004 and signed up for a Virgin Galactic flight “on the spot.” Salim, an adventurer and entrepreneur, is the primary person from Pakistan to go to space, although she now lives in Monaco and Dubai.
VSS Unity was commanded by Kelly Latimer and piloted by CJ Sturckow. Beth Moses, the corporate’s chief astronaut instructor, also flew within the cabin with the purchasers, as on Virgin’s previous industrial flights.
The flight was the fourth for VSS Unity because the company began industrial service in late June. The corporate said it planned to take care of a monthly flight cadence for the foreseeable future, slowly working through its backlog of about 800 customers, a few of whom paid deposits for his or her tickets greater than 15 years ago.
“Our teams in Recent Mexico and California have delivered on our monthly spaceflight objectives,” Michael Colglazier, chief executive of Virgin Galactic, said in an announcement after the flight. That statement added the corporate would turn VSS Unity around for its next flight, Galactic 05, but didn’t disclose a projected date for it.