After almost two years since its last powered flight to space, Virgin Galactic is finally back in the “saddle” with its first unpowered glide, post renovations. Next up, the company plans to do a powered test flight before resuming commercial spaceflights.
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Virgin Galactic has been in an idle mode for the past year and a half as it worked through an FAA investigation and refurbishment of its aircrafts. Now the company sounds ready to pick up the pace, with flights returning soon.
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This has been a big year for Space Tourism, from the sub-orbital hops of Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson to the multi-day orbital journey of the Inspiration4 crew. This raised a number of questions about what it means to be an astronaut. Many claimed that these space-tourists are nothing but passengers, and calling them astronauts dilutes the title provided to space heroes like Neil Armstrong, while others said that reaching space should be enough for the title. The FAA has now put this question to bed, issuing this year’s space tourists FAA Commercial Astronaut wings, but shutting down the program moving forward.
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Back in July, after Virgin Galactic flew its founder Richard Branson on its SpaceShipTwo spaceplane, the company announced a sweepstakes to win two tickets to space. On Wednesday, the company announced the winner and who they want to bring with them on the journey.
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Virgin Galactic announced its third-quarter financial report to investors today, and in it, details of the companies spaceflight seat sales have been shared.
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Since 2000 humanity has had a constant presence of individuals orbiting the Earth onboard the International Space Station. With the rise of commercial opportunities to reach for the stars, and other nations begin their crew launch programs, when is the next crewed launch?
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It has been a shockingly busy past week in space. From continued work towards Artemis I, to spacecraft reaching new planets, a lot has happened in the world of spaceflight and space exploration.
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Virgin Galactic was in some hot water after deviating from the original flight plan and flying outside of the approved airspace during Richard Branson’s spaceflight in July. The FAA has finished its investigation into the mishap by Virgin Galactic.
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This week, SpaceX’s new ships arrived in Florida while Firefly had their first launch that ended in failure. Virgin Galactic has been grounded by the FAA along with more Top stories this week.
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During July’s Unity 22 spaceflight of Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson, The New Yorker reports that the pilots deviated off their approved course. In the report, they state the FAA has begun an investigation; Virgin Galactic replies.
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Virgin Galactic has announced its next spaceflight mission after sending founder Richard Branson to space on its previous mission.
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Following a successful flight to space, Richard Branson announced that Virgin Galactic is partnering with Omaze for a trip giveaway for you and a guest.
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While Virgin Galactic ran into some technical difficulties with the live views from the cabin of VSS Unity, you can now watch the crew experience spaceflight. The crew spent just over a minute above the 50 miles high definition of space but experienced ~2-3 minutes of zero gravity.
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The Wall Street Journal has been able to confirm that Elon Musk has bought a ticket on Virgin Galactic. Although Musk himself hasn’t said anything.
Today we witnessed history as the first fully crewed flight of Virgin Galactic’s spaceplane VSS Unity. This was one of the final test flights before Galactic begin flying paying customers next year.
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This has been a busy week in spaceflight. Many of the major space companies have had notable events; from Richard Branson’s flight to space with Virgin Galactic to Relativity Space’s strongback install.
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The moment that Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Group founder, has been waiting to do for decades has come. He will finally join an elite group of people to ride a vehicle into space with Virgin Galactic’s first fully crewed mission.
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The last few weeks have seen some fierce competition and mudslinging between private spaceflight companies. From Elon Musk’s criticisms of ULA and Blue Origin, to Blue Origin’s criticism of Virgin Galactic, there has been very little peace on Space Twitter recently. That’s why Elon Musk’s recent reply to Richard Branson was so nice to see.
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With the upcoming flight of Richard Branson on Unity22 this weekend it’s easy to say there’s probably some tension between Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson. But instead of raising to the occasion and celebrating the strives of their industry, Blue Origin throws a low blow and trashes Galactic on a technicality.
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Set aside some time on Sunday to catch Virgin Galactic’s very first livestream of a crewed spaceflight on the company’s SpaceShipTwo Unity spaceplane. Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson will be a passenger on the first fully crewed spaceflight on SS2, and special guests include host Stephen Colbert and artist Khalid.
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There is really no material value in one billionaire beating another billionaire to space. Yet Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson is scheduled to be aboard his company’s spacecraft during a suborbital flight before Jeff Bezos rides his rocket with Blue Origin.
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Last Friday it was announced that Virgin Galactic was awarded their full commercial launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration. The marks the beginning of their operational status for crewed sub-orbital flights to space.
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On this day 17 years ago the age of privately funded space ventures reached a major milestone with Mojave Aerospace Ventures’ SpaceShipOne flight. Mojave Aerospace Ventures is a joint venture between Burt Rutan and his company Scaled Composites, largely funded by Paul Allen. This marked the first privately funded and developed crewed spaceflight and also led won Mojave Aerospace Ventures the Ansari X Prize.
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After an unsuccessful attempt to reach space last December, today, Virgin Galactic reached space from Spaceport America earlier today with Pilots CJ Sturckow and Dave Mackay aboard VSS Unity.
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Virgin Galactic is developing a suborbital spaceplane called SpaceShipTwo Unity that is designed to fly passengers and payloads to zero gravity. A VSS Unity test flight in early December failed to reach space as intended, however, and now the company knows why.
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