Virgin Galactic Unity 22 is a suborbital space mission, which was carried out by Virgin Galactic Unity 2 spacecraft on July 1 1.
The crew includes David MacKay, the pilot, and Michael Masucci, the co-pilot, and carries four passengers, namely Sirisha Bandla, vice president of research and operation of Virgin Galactic, Colin Bennett, chief operation engineer, Beth Moses, chief astronaut coach, and Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Galactic.
2021July 1 1, Unity's? Mothership? VMS？ Eve is equipped with VSS in parasitic configuration? Unity, we're going into the water. During the ascent, the red warning light indicates that it deviated from the glide cone at the entrance of the spacecraft, but the flight can still continue and land successfully.
T+2: 38, reaching the apogee of 282,773 feet (86 189 meters) (the boundary of the space below FAI, the upper boundary of the trumpet at the height of 100 km (62 miles) on the Carmen Line, but higher than 80 km (50 miles) and slightly higher than the dome of the space boundary of 86.66 in the United States.
Because the entrance cone deviates from the planned route, the flight will be investigated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Virgin Galactic objected to the safety impact of this deviation in a public statement and pointed out that it was cooperating with the FAA investigation.
On September 2, 20021,it was publicly announced that, according to the order of the Federal Aviation Administration, Spaceship II would be grounded until the investigation of flight anomalies was completed.
Mark P. Stucky, a former Virgin Galactic test pilot, will publicly call for flight deviation and Virgin Galactic's response on Twitter: "The most misleading statement today is Virgin Galactic's.
The fact is that the pilot failed to trim to get the proper pitch rate, and the wind was completely within the limit. They entered the A-class airspace without any substance to solve the ballistic error. "
After deciding to expand the enclosed space around the flight range of the spacecraft, the FAA approved Spaceship II to resume flight in late September.
background
On June 7th, 20021,Jeff Bezos announced that he planned to take part in the first manned flight of his company Blue Origin, which meant boarding the first manned space flight (suborbital) of a private company funded by private funds.
In the next few days, rumors began to spread, and Richard Branson was submitting a similar document on suborbital flight as part of his own private enterprise, and beat Bezos to achieve such a first achievement.
Whether Virgin Galactic, which is close to but has not yet reached the Carmen line, will really realize its first commercial private space flight has been controversial.
The United States and NASA define the space boundary as 80 kilometers (50 miles) above the earth (this is the lowest possible height at which a satellite in a highly elliptical earth orbit can reach and maintain its speed). All other spacefaring countries and FAI define outer space as 100 km (62 miles) above the Carmen line.