Unity was introduced to the public on February 19, 2016. The passenger spaceship was already under construction by the Spaceship Company — a Mojave, California-based subsidiary of Virgin Galactic at the time of the 2014 accident.
The VSS Unity was attached to its carrier jet, the WhiteKnightTwo for the entirety of its 3-hour and 43-minute flight test into the outer reaches of the Earth’s atmosphere in what is called a captive-carry flight over Mojave, California. Even though the Unity never left the protected grasp of the launch vehicle, Virgin Galactic insisted the flight test was successfully carried out, reports Discovery-Seeker.
The company cited the cascade of problems that caused the VSS Enterprise crash, some structural and some determined to be pilot error. But engineers want to compare data from Enterprise and Unity to see how each vehicle structurally handled the stresses of near-stratospheric flight.
And Virgin Galactic is not going to throw caution to the winds, either. Thursday’s test is just the first in a series of rigorous tests yet to come. But the company says it will not move forward until all the data from Thursday’s tests have been thoroughly analysed. Caution was on everyone’s minds, remembering the 2014 crash.
“Today’s an emotional day for us all. So grateful to our families, customers, & friends for sticking with us,” Virgin Galactic representatives wrote on Twitter Thursday afternoon. “Couldn’t open space without you.”
It’s good to see Virgin Galactic reentering the space-tourism race, and with this being the first aircraft manufactured by the company, it is going to be interesting to see how things progress with them. According to the space-tourism company, they won’t test VSS Unity’s ability to fly independently until early in 2017.
