Washington (Sputnik) – a plane designed to carry civilian passengers into space made its first rocket test flight, reaching a speed of more than one and a half times the speed of sound before gliding to a safe landing in the Mojave desert of California, a manufacturer of virgin galaxies, said in a statement on Thursday.
“Today the unity of VSS completed its first flight,” virgin of galaxies reported via Twitter. “The touch down. Congratulations Mark ‘Forger’ Stucky and Dave McKay on the big stage of flight tests.”
Virgin Galactic explained that two members of the crew of a manned space plane Thursday test, firing its rocket engines once drove to go to the mother plane.
The founder of Virgin Richard Branson galactic later tweeted that the unity achieved Mach 1.6, more than one-and-a-half times the speed of sound before landing. The flight lasted just over one hour after the mother aircraft, with attached unity, took off from the Mojave air and space dock.
Virgin Galactic has announced plans to build a fleet of these aircraft and charge passengers worth $250,000 for suborbital flights into space.
Before the flight on Thursday, the unity was completed seven test flights in which the aircraft was released from a mother aircraft and planned to the Ground without using engines — as well as a former American spacecraft.
An earlier version of the space plane the company has suffered in road accident fatalities in October 2014, which was attributed to pilot error, according to published reports.
Sourse: sputniknews.com
