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 […]
|
||||||
|
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) […] 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 […] One issue not raised with last week’s announcement of Guy Laliberté as the next commercial ISS visitor is who his backup would be should he be unable to fly. Yesterday Space Adventures CEO Eric Anderson hinted that an announcement was forthcoming, saying only that the person was “a very talented and special lady”. However, the […] As expected yesterday, Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté announced his plans to fly to the ISS at the end of September on the next Soyuz flight to the station. Laliberté is calling his flight the “Poetic Social Mission” in space “to raise humanity’s awareness of water-related issues” for his One Drop Foundation. “Information about […] WhiteKnightTwo (aka “VMS Eve”) has made its sixth test flight, according to a tweet from Virgin Galactic. The flight was a success and reached a peak altitude of 10,670 meters (35,000 feet), according to the statement, which would make it the highest test flight to date. As of midday Thursday the flight hadn’t yet appeared […] The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) made an unusual announcement Monday: it would hold a press conference Thursday morning about the first Canadian space tourist, who would perform “the first philanthropic mission to the International Space Station”. The identity of that person, and the nature of that mission, were not immediately disclosed. We do now, though, […] 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 […] Virgin Galactic announced this morning that the company has successfully carried out its first full-scale engine tests for SpaceShipTwo. Virgin released a video featuring the tests along with a press release: Neither the video nor the press release provide much in the way of technical details about the engine tests, other than the engine […] A post on Wired’s Autopia blog caught my attention yesterday: “Exclusive Video of Virgin Galactic’s Test Flight”. Wired claimed to have obtained “exclusive video of Virgin Galactic’s recent test flight” of WhiteKnightTwo. The video is here: At first I was impressed that Wired got its hands on what presumably was video from the April […] |
||||||
| Copyright © 2026 NewSpace Journal - All Rights Reserved | ||||||
Recent Comments