Sub-orbital crewed spaceflight company Virgin Galactic announced on Thursday that the first powered test flight of its SpaceShipTwo spaceplane will take place later this month. The test flight will be made from Spaceport America in the US State of New Mexico. The test flight will be conducted with the first SpaceShipTwo vehicle, which carries the individual name of VSS Unity. (VSS standing for Virgin Space Ship.) 

The flight is currently scheduled for the window from November 19 to November 23. In addition to its flight test activities, the VSS Unity will also carry revenue-generating payloads (which form part of the US National Aeronautics and Space Agency’s ‘flight opportunities programme’).

Significant progress has been made in the construction of the second SpaceShipTwo vehicle, which should be rolled out during the first quarter of next year. The company has experienced business and operational delays because of the Covid-19 pandemic, and instituted strict health and safety protocols, including staggered shifts and adapting processes to allow engineers to work mainly from home. It has, however, been able to maintain its schedule for its planned upcoming flights.

The SpaceShipTwo spacecraft is powered by a hybrid rocket motor, which combines solid fuel with liquid oxygen to generate thrust. Hybrid rocket motors are simpler than liquid-fuelled rockets but provide more thrust than pure solid fuel rockets. It can carry a crew of two and six passengers into space, on a suborbital trajectory, and was originally intended as a vehicle for space tourism (and, as of the end of last month, some 600 people had signed up to fly as passengers in the spacecraft). More recently, however, the company has diversified its planned operations to add the carriage of suborbital space experiments, including carrying a researcher with them. The SpaceShipTwo is fully reusable.

The spacecraft is carried aloft from the spaceport by Virgin Galactic’s WhiteKnightTwo mother plane. This is a four-engined twin-fuselage aircraft, made entirely from composites and is, in fact, the largest all-composites aircraft in the world. SpaceShipTwo is carried under WhiteKnightTwo’s wing centre section (which also joins the aircraft’s two fuselages). The spacecraft is released at an altitude of about 50 000 ft (15 240 m), after which it ignites its rocket motor and soars away, into space. After re-entry, SpaceShipTwo glides back to land at the Spaceport.

Both WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo were designed and built by The Spaceship Company (TSC), which is also responsible for the rocket motor that powers the spacecraft. Based at the Mojave Air and Space Port in the US State of California, TSC is a sister company to Virgin Galactic and is currently building more examples of both the aircraft and the spacecraft. It is also working on the design of a high-speed commercial aircraft and in August signed a memorandum of understanding with UK industrial technology group Rolls-Royce regarding the development of the engines for such an aircraft.

Funded by the State of New Mexico and by Dona Ana and Sierra counties (most American states are divided into counties), Spaceport America is the world’s first purpose-built commercial spaceport. It also serves as the headquarters for Virgin Galactic’s human spaceflight activities and its flight operations centre. However, the spaceport also hosts a number of other aerospace companies and yet others regularly use it for test and launch operations.