Scaled ready to begin SpaceShipTwo glide tests

[Update 2: SpaceShipTwo has successfully completed its first glide test, landing at Mojave Air and Space Port shortly after 8 am PDT (11 am EDT) Sunday morning, a little more than 10 minutes after being released by WhiteKnightTwo.]

[Update: the first glide test is indeed taking place Sunday morning; follow along at the Popular Mechanics […]

Virgin: Irish article “entirely inaccurate”

Virgin Galactic has responded to yesterday’s report that the company is only accepting US citizens for its flights by, in effect, saying the article is completely off base. The Irish Independent article claimed that an Irishman living in England, Cyril Bennis, had been told by the company that it was currently only accepting US citizens. […]

Weekend roundup

Is Virgin Galactic only accepting US citizens now? That’s the claim of an article Sunday in the Irish Independent, which reports that an Irishman living in England “received a legal notice from Virgin Galactic stating that at present only US citizens can be considered for inclusion.” The company has signed up and accepted deposits from […]

WhiteKnightTwo landing gear collapses

WhiteKnightTwo in flight over Las Cruces airport in June 2009. The landing gear is partially extended during this overflight.

The AP reported late today that part of the landing gear for Virgin Galactic’s WhiteKnightTwo aircraft collapsed upon landing at the end of a test flight today at Mojave Air and Space Port in California. […]

A brief Virgin (and TSC) update

Enrico Palermo of Virgin Galactic discusses the company’s development of SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo at the NewSpace 2010 conference on Saturday.

At the end of Saturday’s sessions at the NewSpace 2010 conference in Silicon Valley, Enrico Palermo, project engineering manager for Virgin Galactic, gave a brief update on the company’s activities. There weren’t any new […]

Space Adventures returns to suborbital spaceflight

Eric Anderson (left) and John Carmack talk about their suborbital partnership at ISDC on Thursday.

As expected, Space Adventures announced Thursday at the International Space Development Conference, (ISDC) in Chicago its partnership with Armadillo Aerospace to provide suborbital space tourism flights. Armadillo will develop a vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) suborbital vehicle carrying people […]

ISDC has a strong NewSpace flavor this year

I’m at the airport waiting to catch a flight to Chicago for this year’s International Space Development Conference, the annual conference of the National Space Society. (I was already supposed to be there, but Untied, er, United, canceled my flight last night.) This year’s conference has a particular emphasis on NewSpace, more so than conventional […]

See WK2 and SS2 fly in New Mexico this October

Well, at least flyby overhead. The organizers of the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS) announced today that the two vehicles will put in an appearance in the skies over Spaceport America in New Mexico on October 22, the day after the two-day ISPCS. “This will be the first long distance test flight […]

SpaceShipTwo captive carry flight video

Virgin Galactic has posted a video of yesterday’s first captive carry flight of SpaceShipTwo, including a brief interview at the end with test pilot Mark Stuckey, who says that “I don’t think we could have planned, realistically planned, for any better success” on the flight.

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SpaceShipTwo flies, on schedule

WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo take off Monday morning from Mojave (credit: Mark Greenberg)

Yesterday morning WhiteKnightTwo took off from Mojave Air and Space Port in California with a special payload attached to it: SpaceShipTwo, making its first, albeit captive carry, flight. The flight lasted two hours and 54 minutes and achieved an altitude of about […]

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