Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity spacecraft, on which the first commercial missions took place, rose again into the sky. Now it is used for pilot training, who will control the next generation of cosmolites.
For reference: Virgin Galactic is an American aerospace company, founded by billionaire Richard Branson, which specializes in organizing commercial suborbital space flights for space tourism and launching scientific payloads.
VSS Unity performed a glide flight after separating from the Eve launch vehicle in the sky above Spaceport America's commercial spaceport in New Mexico. The plane glided and landed on the runway of the spaceport. It was its first outing since its last commercial suborbital flight in June 2024 year. The company has decided to stop flying Unity, to focus resources on a new space plane called SpaceShip, which is currently under development. However, flights were resumed, to train pilots before launching the new SpaceShip this year and to test ground services.
Mike Moses, president of the company's space flight division, said, that Unity's glide characteristics and power management profile are an excellent real-world analog for evaluating the behavior of a new spacecraft. Using already proven equipment helps pilots and technical teams to prepare for the upcoming flight tests of the new ship much more efficiently and confidently, than conventional simulator training.
In the words of Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglaser, as of today, the company is following the previous schedules, which include glide flights of the new SpaceShip in the third quarter and powered-on flights in the fourth quarter, before starting commercial operation.
Source: https://spacenews.com