Virgin Galactic will conduct crewed test flight of SpaceShipTwo next month

By Georgina Torbet Published April 25, 2023

Virgin Galactic will be conducting a crewed test of it SpaceShipTwo next month, inching the company closer to its plan of taking tourists to the very edge of space.

Recommended Videos

The test is set for October 22, as discovered by CNBC and confirmed by Virgin Galactic. The upcoming test flight will carry two test pilots on board, CNBC reports, and if successful then this will be followed by a second crewed test flight which will have four mission specialists on board.

After both of these test flights, the founder of Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson, may join another test flight early next year to inaugurate the space tourism service.

VSS in action during its test mission in December 2018. Virgin Galactic

Virgin Galactic confirmed to CNBC they will be testing the SpaceShipTwo soon, but noted that the October 22 date is the start of the launch window, so the actual test could be later than that date. The test will operate from Spaceport America.

The suborbital SpaceShipTwo Unity spaceplane completed its first powered flight in 2018, and since then the craft has completed a number of further tests, including a recent test flight from the new Spaceport America which will be the starting location for tourist flights.

The company has been sharing more and more information about its upcoming space tourism services, including recently showing off what the inside of a SpaceShipTwo cabin will look like. The six-seater cabin will have 17 windows to provide views of the Earth as passengers are taken to the very edge of space and experience zero gravity for a short time.

The cabin’s interior is designed with honeycomb elements to allow passengers to climb and move around during a brief period of weightlessness, and there is also a large mirror at the back of the cabin and a number of cameras so that the weightless experience can be observed and recorded.

In addition to space tourism flights using the suborbital SpaceShipTwo, Virgin Galactic has also expressed interest in carrying space tourists to the International Space Station as part of a partnership with NASA, though for this task the company would need a different vehicle capable of carrying passengers into orbit.

Georgina Torbet

Former Space Writer

Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…

Topics

Space

NASA’s new telescope can see 100 times more sky than Hubble in a single shot

NASA just launched a $4 billion telescope to map billions of galaxies

NASA Roman Telescope Launch Featured

The Hubble telescope has an almost legendary status. Over the last three decades, Hubble gave us some of the most spectacular close-ups of the universe ever captured, and now, NASA’s newest space telescope wants to see the bigger picture. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope successfully launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:26 a.m. EDT on August 30. Roman is now beginning a roughly three-month journey toward the Sun-Earth L2 point, nearly a million miles away, where it will spend its primary five-year mission surveying huge portions of the cosmos.

Roman carries a 2.4-meter primary mirror, the same diameter as Hubble’s, but its Wide Field Instrument can capture a field of view at least 100 times larger than Hubble’s. NASA expects it to use that combination of sharpness and scale to map billions of galaxies, study dark matter and dark energy, and discover enormous numbers of previously unknown worlds.

Space

NASA built the Roman Space Telescope to study dark matter, but it can also help protect Earth from killer asteroids

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope wasn't built to hunt asteroids, but it turns out to be great at it.

Nancy Grace Roman space telescope.

NASA is about to launch a telescope built to unlock some of the universe's biggest mysteries, and it turns out that same design could help protect Earth along the way.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is set to launch from Kennedy Space Center on August 30, 2026, with a primary mission focused on studying dark matter and dark energy - the invisible forces shaping galaxies and cosmic expansion. Researchers now say its unique design also makes it unexpectedly effective at spotting dangerous asteroids headed our way (via MIT Technology Review).

Space

Space is becoming Bezos and Musk’s next data center site, and we have every reason to worry

The AI boom is coming for the night sky

How Vast's space station will look in orbit.

AI data centers already consume vast amounts of electricity and water on Earth, so Silicon Valley has begun looking somewhere considerably more spacious... literally.

Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, along with several other companies, have proposed enormous constellations of satellites designed to operate as orbital data centers. However, environmental groups and former space officials are now warning that putting them into orbit at the proposed scale could have severe consequences for Earth's atmosphere and the night sky.