WK2 photo gallery

Here’s a set of photos from Saturday’s WhiteKnightTwo overflight of Las Cruces that I took at the local airport. Enjoy!

Video: WK2 in Las Cruces

A short video I shot with a pocket HD camera (Kodak Zi6) of one of the low overflights of Las Cruces International Airport by WhiteKnightTwo on Saturday. For better viewing go to the video on YouTube and be sure to select the HD option to see it in its full glory.

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WK2 flyover a success

As promised, WhiteKnightTwo did make an appearance in the skies over Las Cruces on Saturday morning. The aircraft took off from Phoenix and, at around 9:30 am MDT (11:30 am EDT) made a series of three low passes over the airport. WK2 made a pair of passes over the 8/26 runway and then, after […]

The groundbreaking

Other than WhiteKnightTwo’s no-show, there wasn’t much in the way of breaking news (pun unintended) from Friday’s Spaceport America groundbreaking event in New Mexico. The picture above shows the actual ceremonial groundbreaking, eschewing shovels in favor of some heavy equipment that will likely soon be put to use with actual spaceport construction. Later the […]

A second chance

It appears that (weather permitting) WhiteKnightTwo will make an appearance in New Mexico skies on Saturday morning. Details are in the press release below:

VIRGIN GALACTIC MOTHERSHIP TO FLY OVER LAS CRUCES SATURDAY MORNING JUNE 20

LAS CRUCES, NM – Virgin Galactic’s WhiteKnightTwo vehicle is expected to fly over the Las Cruces International Airport […]

WK2 aborts Spaceport America flyby

As you may have heard by now, WhiteKnightTwo was unable to make its planned flyover of the groundbreaking ceremonies for Spaceport America on Friday. Flightglobal.com has a good summary of the aborted flight, which ran into problems when an actuator warning light came on during the flight, apparently just as they reached the Arizona-New Mexico […]

Spaceport America’s big day is today

Today is the groundbreaking for Spaceport America, and events kicked off late yesterday with a public event on the campus of New Mexico State University in Las Cruces featuring Gov. Bill Richardson (speaking above) and representatives from the city, university, FAA, and Virgin Galactic. No news came out of that event, with the speeches […]

What’s in a name

This week the Personal Spaceflight Federation announced it was changing its name to the Commercial Spaceflight Federation and unveiled a new web site at the commercialspaceflight.org domain name. Why the change from the PSF to the CSF? According to the industry association, it’s a recognition that the companies who are members do more than personal […]

WK2 looks ready to go to New Mexico

Flightglobal.com reports that WhiteKnightTwo has completed two more test flights in recent days, which appear to clear the way for the aircraft to make its first long-distance flight on Friday to fly over the groundbreaking ceremonies for Spaceport America in New Mexico. A one-hour test flight on June 11th (as noted in the flight logs) […]

WK2 expands the envelope

WhiteKnightTwo’s test program continued this week with a seventh test flight, Scaled Composites revealed in the test logs for the program. The flight set new records for altitude (45,000 feet/13,700 meters), speed (340 knots/630 km/h) and duration (6.1 hours). Plans still call for the aircraft to make a flyby at the Spaceport America groundbreaking next […]