Virgin Galactic is celebrating its sixth successful test flight of the VSS Unity spaceplane. The most recent successful test flight positions the company, and its customers, a little closer to private space travel.
The Unity is the second iteration of “Spaceshiptwo,” and the goal is to offer suborbital rocket-powered flights for customers. In this most recent test flight, Virgin Galactic was able to test Unity’s oxidizer-tank by filling it with nitrous oxide while linked with its mothership. The craft was then put through a series of maneuvers before returning to terra firma.
“We are really pleased with what we saw today,” said lead pilot, David Mackay. “we collected hundreds of gigabytes of data for us to review, and from the pilots’ point of view, it felt really wonderful. all of you here at virgin galactic and the spaceship company should be very proud: VSS Unity is a great spaceship.”