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 […]
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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 […] 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 […] [See update below] SPACE.com and Flight International both reported that WhiteKnightTwo, the carrier aircraft for SpaceShipTwo, made its fourth and longest test flight on Mon day, a four-hour flight that reached an altitude of 6,100 meters and speed of nearly 260 km/h. However, both reported on an incident during a touch-and-go approach at Mojave Air […] Yesterday a Canadian travel agency who is accredited to sell flights on Virgin Galactic held a press conference to provide an update on Virgin’s activities, with the message that, despite the economy, people are still interested in, and willing to pay for, suborbital spaceflights, as the Toronto Star reports today. That’s not too surprising if […] Here’s about an excerpt of a video released by Virgin Galactic on Friday with clips of a WhiteKnightTwo flight: WhiteKnightTwo flight highlights from Jeff Foust on Vimeo. WhiteKnightTwo, the carrier aircraft for SpaceShipTwo, took to the skies on Wednesday afternoon, according to several observers in Mojave. No word yet on the technical details associated with the flight, including flight time, altitude, etc. This was the first flight since February 5th and the third overall; the first was on December 21. Last week we noted that Richard Branson had a more ambitious schedule for Virgin Galactic than company officials have recently stated, claiming that “Virgin Galactic will take off in November”. That statement, made in Boston last week, doesn’t appear to be an isolated incident. The German magazine Stern has an article this week about Virgin […] |
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