20.10.2023
Virgin Galactic to perform suborbital research flight in November
Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity ascends towards space on the Galactic 02 mission Aug. 10. Credit: Virgin Galactic webcast
WASHINGTON — Virgin Galactic will conclude its schedule of suborbital spaceflights this year with a mission in early November whose crew will include a longtime advocate of suborbital research.
The company announced Oct. 18 that the next flight of its VSS Unity suborbital spaceplane, Galactic 05, is scheduled for a window that opens Nov. 2 from Spaceport America in New Mexico. It will be the fifth commercial flight for the company and the sixth flight of Unity this year, all since late May.
Galactic 05, like the Galactic 01 mission in June, is described as a research flight by the company. It will carry among its crew two researchers, Alan Stern and Kellie Gerardi. A third customer is described by the company only as a Franco-Italian private astronaut.
Stern, an associate vice president of Southwest Research Institute’s (SwRI) space science division, will evaluate a harness used for collecting biomedical data as well as test a mockup of an astronomical camera planned for a future suborbital flight. Gerardi, representing the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences (IIAS), a research and educational organization, will test a biomonitoring device and collect other biomedical data while also conducting a fluid dynamics experiment.
Stern has been a leading advocate for using commercial suborbital vehicles like Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo to conduct research more rapidly and less expensively than alternative platforms, giving scientists access to several minutes of microgravity and other aspects of the space environment. That interest has included running a series of conferences since 2010 devoted to commercial suborbital research.
Stern was the first scientist selected by NASA in 2020 for an award through the agency’s Flight Opportunities program that would allow him to go on a commercial suborbital vehicle to conduct research. This flight, though, is funded by SwRI and will serve as training for that future NASA-funded mission.
“What sets this flight apart from others, and which likely represents a new kind of space activity, is that more than anything else I will be training — in space — for future space experiments I will be performing with NASA funding,” Stern said in a statement. “Virgin’s suborbital costs are low enough to open up space training actually in space as a viable opportunity, and that is a game changer.”
IIAS signed an agreement with Virgin Galactic in 2021 to fly Gerardi, who has worked with IIAS for several years. “This mission represents the beginning of a new era of access to space for the research community, and the culmination of a personal lifelong dream,” she said in a statement. “I’m looking forward to paving the way for our many talented researchers who will follow, using space as a laboratory to benefit humanity.”
The company has highlighted suborbital research as an alternative application for its vehicles versus space tourism, and one that is potentially more lucrative on a per-seat basis. “We’re thrilled to offer a wide breadth of high-quality and reliable access to space-based research,” Michael Colglazier, chief executive of Virgin Galactic, said in a company statement. “Insights from this flight will be used to enhance and refine the research capabilities of our future Delta fleet.”
The mission will be commanded by Mike Masucci with Kelly Latimer as pilot and Colin Bennett as the in-flight astronaut instructor. The company said that Galactic 05 will be the last to carry an astronaut instructor, with Galactic 06 and subsequent flights carrying four private astronaut customers. Colgalzier said in an earnings call in August that the company would likely replace the astronaut instructor with a fourth customer “as we move into 2024.”
While Galactic 05 continues a roughly monthly cadence of Virgin Galactic suborbital missions dating back to late May, it will also be the last of the year. The company said Galactic 06 will take place in January to give the company time for “routine, planned annual vehicle inspections.”
Quelle: SN
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Update: 3.11.2023
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Virgin Galactic set to launch Galactic 05 mission with research duo today (Nov. 2)
The flight will mark half a year of consistent monthly launches for the spaceflight company.
Virgin Galactic is set to take off on its fifth commercial spaceflight since it began the service last summer.
Galactic 05 is scheduled to lift off from Spaceport America in New Mexico on Thursday (Nov. 2) at around 9 a.m. MDT (10 a.m. EDT; 1400 GMT).
The mission will carry three passengers as well as Virgin Galactic crew aboard the VSS Unity space plane on a suborbital mission, on which cabin occupants will experience several minutes of weightlessness at the edge of space.
Whether or not the passenger names for each flight are made public is a decision made between those ticket-holders and Virgin Galactic, and not every passenger over the last few months has opted to have their name published before their flight. For Galactic 05, two of the three passengers' names were released earlier in October, and the pair happen to already be well known in the space industry.
Alan Stern is a planetary scientist and vice president of the Space Science Division at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado. He has been involved in several NASA research missions throughout his career and currently serves as principal investigator of the New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.
That one famous picture of Pluto you've seen, which stars the dwarf planet's famous heart-shaped feature? Alan Stern is a major reason that photo exists.
Flying alongside Stern inside VSS Unity’s crew cabin will be Kellie Gerardi. Everything in Gerardi’s life has led her to this first flight to space — and she hopes it will be the first of many.
Gerardi has worked as a researcher in the aeronautics industry throughout the span of her career. She is a missions operations lead at Palantir Technologies, a payload specialist at the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences (IIAS) and a social media STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) influencer with a following of nearly 700,000. Through her online presence, she has created a great deal of educational content that has been viewed by millions, and she has authored three books about space.
Stern and Gerardi’s missions were each sponsored by their respective organizations, both of which are focused on research. Their primary objectives during Galactic 05 will be to complete a series of experiments that each will be conducting inside the short window of weightlessness during the apogee of their flight.
The third private passenger was not named in Virgin Galactic’s release, but was specified as someone of Franco-Italian nationality. A Virgin Galactic astronaut instructor, Colin Bennett, will fly inside VSS Unity’s cabin with the trio, with mission commander Mike Masucci and pilot Kelly Latimer at the controls in the cockpit.
Unity’s flight to space begins on the runway at Spaceport America. The space plane stows between the dual cockpits of its carrier aircraft, VMS Eve, commanded and piloted for Galactic 05 by Jameel Janjua and Andy Edgell, respectively. At around 50,000 feet (15,000 meters) in altitude, VSS Unity is released from Eve to burn its rocket motor and complete its climb to space.
Following their short stint on the top of the world, VSS Unity and its crew will return for a landing back at the runway at Spaceport America, followed shortly after by VMS Eve.
Virgin Galactic has not livestreamed its missions since Galactic 02, and now only posts mission updates through the company’s X account, formerly known as Twitter. Thursday’s flight is expected to begin at approximately 9 a.m. MDT (10 a.m. ET/1400 GMT). From liftoff to landing, Galactic 05 will likely last around 1.5 hours.
Quelle: SC
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Final countdown is on for SwRI scientist Alan Stern's journey to space. Here's what you should know.
SwRI scientist Alan Stern and crew mate Kellie Gerardi stand in front of Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity. They're scheduled to fly to space as part of the company's "Galactic5" mission.
LAS CRUCES — Southwest Research Institute scientist Alan Stern is set to fly to space Thursday morning aboard the Virgin Galactic spaceship VSS Unity.
Stern, 65, has made a career of studying the heavens and calls the mission the realization of a lifelong dream.
Here’s what you need to know.
Where and when is the launch?
The commercial space flight dubbed “Galactic5” is scheduled to launch from Spaceport America outside Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, at 10 a.m. San Antonio time.
READ MORE: Southwest Research Institute scientist heading to space aboard Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity
Who else is on board with Stern?
VSS Unity commander Mike Masucci and pilot Kelly Latimer will fly the hour-and-a-half mission that will carry Stern and his crewmates, Kellie Gerardi, a payload specialist and bioastronautics researcher for the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences, and an unidentified private astronaut of “Franco-Italian nationality,” to an altitude of nearly 56 miles.
Is it a rocket launch?
No. Virgin Galactic’s operation differs from other types of space flight. Instead of lobbing a capsule or shuttle directly into space atop a rocket, it’s carried aloft on an airplane known as VMS Eve.
At an altitude of 50,000 feet, VSS Unity is to separate from the mother ship, ignite its rocket motor and fly straight up at speeds reaching three times the speed of sound. The crew will experience several minutes of weightlessness as the spacecraft flies along its parabolic trajectory.
What happens then?
While in zero gravity, the craft does a feather maneuver, essentially a back flip, to reorient the craft. This allows the crew to see Earth from the cabin windows before VSS Unity reaches a belly-down orientation for re-entry. Then the craft glides back through atmosphere and lands back at the spaceport.
How can I watch?
There will not be a public live stream of the mission, but Virgin Galactic social media channels will have live updates. Those include its feed on X, on Facebook and Instagram. It will also be sharing updates on its YouTube channel, and those platforms already have images and information on Stern and the flight.
You can also get updates on the flight here at express-news.com.
Is this Stern’s first space flight?
Going to space is the realization of a lifelong journey for Stern, 65, who’s had a long career studying the heavens.
A former NASA associate administrator, he’s a planetary scientist and associate vice president of SwRI’s space science division working out of the institute’s Boulder, Colo., office. He’s also the principal investigator on NASA’s New Horizons mission that’s exploring Pluto and Kuiper Belt, and he’s had roles in 30 different space missions.
Is he just along for the ride?
No, he’ll be working. While on VSS Unity, Stern will conduct a space physiology experiment and train for a future flight where he’ll use the Southwest Ultraviolet Imaging System, a sort of telescope, to observe stars and other objects in space.
He’s been in final preparations for the mission since arriving Saturday in Las Cruces.
What has Stern said?
Stern, Virgin Galactic’s “Astronaut 020,” is documenting his journey in a blog called “My Suborbital Life” at the NASAwatch website.
“To be honest, I have wanted to fly aboard space missions since I was a kid growing up in awe of the Apollo program,” he wrote in one post. “As a young engineer, and then as a young scientist, I did everything I could think of to make myself a top candidate to be a NASA astronaut.”
Over the years, he applied six times to be a NASA astronaut, but wasn’t selected.
“It’s hard for me to process how long I have held this dream and how much effort, most of it unsuccessful (or at best preparatory), that I‘ve invested to realize it,” he wrote. “And now it’s truly surreal to write that I am flying on the very next human spaceflight mission.”
How many times has Virgin Galactic been to space?
Galactic5 will be the company’s sixth space research mission and its second this year. Sir Richard Branson, the company’s founder, flew on its first fully crewed flight from Spaceport America on July 11, 2021.
Less than 700 humans have escaped Earth’s atmosphere to reach space. Commercial space companies like Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are making space more accessible. According to Virgin Galactic, about 800 people have signed up for future flights with the company.
Quelle: San Antonio Express News
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Update: 4.11.2023
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Virgin Galactic carries researchers on fifth commercial suborbital flight
Participants on the Galactic 05 flight by Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity vehicle carry our research and other activities during the brief weightless phase of the Nov. 2 flight. Credit: Virgin Galactic
WASHINGTON — Virgin Galactic completed its sixth and final suborbital spaceflight of the year Nov. 2, flying two researchers and a private astronaut.
The company’s VSS Unity spaceplane took off from New Mexico’s Spaceport America at 9 a.m. Eastern, attached to the VMS Eve mothership aircraft. Unity separated at about 9:45 a.m. Eastern, igniting its hybrid rocket motor to fly to a peak altitude of approximately 87.2 kilometers and top speed of Mach 2.96. Unity glided back to a runway landing at Spaceport America nearly an hour after takeoff.
The flight, designated Galactic 05 by the company, was its fifth commercial spaceflight since late June, and the sixth overall this year when including a company test flight in May. On board were two researchers, Kellie Gerardi and Alan Stern, and a space tourist, Ketty Pucci-Sisti Maisonrouge.
Stern, vice president at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and a longtime advocate for suborbital research, flew on Galactic 05 primarily as a training mission for a future NASA-funded research mission on VSS Unity. He tested a biomedical harness and a mockup of a camera.
Gerardi flew on Galactic 05 sponsored by the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences (IIAS). She conducted three experiments in fluid dynamics and biomedical research that had been tested previously on parabolic flights operated by the National Research Council of Canada.
In an interview after the flight, both said they were able to complete their experiments during the few minutes of microgravity on the flight. Gerardi, who said she has flown on hundreds of parabolic aircraft flights that provide much shorter durations of weightless, said she was “pleasantly surprised” by the quality of the microgravity on Unity.
Stern, in an article he wrote before the flight, provided a detailed timeline of what he planned to do in those three minutes. “I got everything done,” he said afterwards, although a couple minor issues caused him to fall behind that timeline at points. “It was kind of a wavy line around the straight line of the script.”
The experience, he said, was valuable for him for his future suborbital research flight, and he believed other researchers would benefit from training flights. “Funding people to go on training flights is risk reduction,” he said. “Your batting average is going to be way higher on flight two versus flight one.”
Gerardi said she learned a lot from both the flight itself and planning for it, such as optimizing procedures and experiment designs. IIAS is working to arrange another flight with Virgin Galactic.
There were a few moments for the two researchers to enjoy the flight. “I was so task-oriented on my science payload that it wasn’t until the payload was secure that I was able to look out the window,” Gerardi recalled, and was stunned by the view. “You could see the Earth as a planet. It was really profound.”
The third customer on the flight, Maisonrouge, was an early “Founder” customer of Virgin Galactic who, according to a company biography, was fascinated with space since watching the Apollo landings as a child. As with other recent Virgin Galactic flights, the company disclosed her identity only after landing.
Unity was commanded by Mike Masucci with Kelly Latimer as pilot and astronaut trainer Colin Bennett in the cabin. Virgin Galactic previously said that, starting with Galactic 06, it will not fly an astronaut trainer, freeing up that seat for a fourth customer.
That next flight will take place in January, the company confirmed, after an annual maintenance period for the vehicles. Virgin Galactic will release its third quarter financial results after the markets close Nov. 8.
Quelle: SN