In his speech at the International Space Development Conference in Orlando this morning, Will Whitehorn confirmed some earlier speculation and said that WhiteKnightTwo (WK2) will make its first long-distance flight on June 19 and put in an appearance over Spaceport America during its groundbreaking ceremony that day. The plan is (weather permitting) that WK2 will take off from Mojave, fly to and over the spaceport, and return to Mojave without stopping. An exact flight plan may be published before the flight to allow people to try and observe it along the way.
In the meantime he said that they will perform a couple more test flights at higher altitudes to test the performance there. They still plan to fly WK2 to Oshkosh, Wisconsin in late July for the AirVenture air show there.
Regarding SpaceShipTwo, Whitehorn said they current plans call for flight tests to begin by the end of the year, featuring glide tests. He didn’t state when powered flight tests of SS2 might begin, but did hint that they would start flying customers in the next 18-24 months.
[…] Development Conference in Orlando last week Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn said that they would do some high altitude test flights in advance of their first planned long distance flight on June 19 for the Spaceport America […]