Fifth Successful Human Spaceflight for Virgin Galactic
Fifth Successful Human Spaceflight for Virgin Galactic
Maintains One Flight per Month Pace from Spaceport America
Virgin Galactic Holdings completed its its fifth successful human space mission in five months, ‘Galactic 04’, Friday morning.
“Our teams in New Mexico and California have delivered on our monthly spaceflight objectives."
Michael Colglazier, Virgin Galactic
“Our teams in New Mexico and California have delivered on our monthly spaceflight objectives," said Michael Colglazier, CEO of Virgin Galactic. "Three new astronauts journeyed to space today and brought back incredible memories and stories of their experience above the Earth. These early missions with our initial ship, VSS Unity, have informed and confirmed the design and maintenance objectives for our Delta class spaceships, and the production tooling for those ships is on track to commence later in the fourth quarter”.
The ’Galactic 04’ crew included:
Astronaut 017 Ron Rosano from the United States of America.
Astronaut 018 Trevor Beattie from the United Kingdom.
Astronaut 019 Namira Salim from Pakistan, marking the first person to fly to space from that country. Salim is also a resident of the United Arab Emirates and of Monaco.
VSS Unity was piloted by Commander Kelly Latimer and Pilot CJ Sturckow, with Chief Astronaut Instructor Beth Moses on board. VMS Eve was piloted by Commander Nicola Pecile and Pilot Jameel Janjua.
‘Galactic 04’ departed from Spaceport America at 10:23 am MT. VSS Unity was released at an altitude of 44,341 feet, and reached an altitude of 54.3 miles. The top speed was Mach 2.95, and the flight landed at 9:28 am MT.
The Company will now proceed with post-flight inspections and analysis in preparation for the next commercial space mission, ‘Galactic 05’.