Monday passed another test suborbital spacecraft SpaceShipTwo Unity, developed by the company Virgin Galactic. During a test flight, engineers tested the system, which should help the vehicle to carry out aerodynamic braking when landing. The test was successful, so the next time experts will begin to test other nodes in Unity.
The company reported that the eighth flight was in normal mode, and reports of flying called “encouraging”. Aboard the space ship Unity was two pilots, the WhiteKnightTwo carrier also conducted two pilots, which in addition to on Board was the engineer.
The previous model of the spacecraft from Virgin Galactic crashed in the desert of southern California in the fall of 2014 during the test flight. Recall that in the crash one pilot was killed and the other suffered serious injuries.
Since then, the developers have made the necessary conclusions, and studied the mistakes made in the previous design. The new ship was much safer than the previous version, so Virgin are building quite optimistic plans for its commercial exploitation.
Space ship Unity is primarily designed for suborbital tourists. Willing, and more than 700 people, can already purchase a ticket, the price of which is about 250 thousand dollars.
The tourist spaceship, Virgin Galactic has made another test flight
Vyacheslav Larionov