Virgin Galactic 02 launch live updates: Flight will take mother, daughter, Olympian to space

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Morgan McFall-Johnsen,Marianne GuenotAug 10, 2023, 14:30 IST
Virgin Galactic 02 launch live updates: Flight will take mother, daughter, Olympian to space

Left to right: Anastatia Mayers, Jon Goodwin, and Keisha Schahaff are flying to the edge of space on Virgin Galactic's first tourism spaceflight.Virgin Galactic

Virgin Galactic is launching its first tourist passengers to the edge of space. The flight, called Galactic 02, is set to lift off on Thursday.

Space tourism holds great promise for the company: In its second quarter earnings report, Virgin Galactic attributed an increase in quarterly revenue from $0.4 in 2022 to $2 million this year to its commercial spaceflight endeavors.

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Virgin Galactic's passengers are set to fly more than 50 miles above the ground but not enter Earth's orbit.

Virgin Galactic's passengers are set to fly more than 50 miles above the ground but not enter Earth's orbit.
The VSS Unity roars toward the edge of space in a file photo.Virgin Galactic

This is a suborbital flight, meaning it will not enter Earth's orbit.

Virgin Galactic's space plane, called the VSS Unity, is not powerful enough for that.

Instead, if all goes according to plan, a double-fuselage aircraft called "VMS Eve" will serve as a mothership and carry the spacecraft roughly 10 miles above sea level. Then it will drop the VSS Unity.

The pilots must then fire the rocket plane's engines, tilt its nose toward the heavens, and roar upwards another 45 miles or so.

Near the peak of the flight, more than 50 miles above the ground, the plane will glide.

With the curvature of the Earth stretching below and the blackness of space looming above, the passengers will be able to unbuckle, float weightlessly around the cabin, and gawk out the plane's 17 windows. That will last about five minutes until the plane begins to fall back to Earth.

The passengers will not fly above the Kármán line, which is sometimes considered the threshold of space at 62 miles above sea level. But the Federal Aviation Administration has previously recognized VSS Unity pilots as astronauts.

Galactic 02 kicks off a new era of space tourism for Virgin Galactic.

Galactic 02 kicks off a new era of space tourism for Virgin Galactic.
A Virgin Galactic astronaut during a suborbital spaceflight like the one launching on Thursday.Virgin Galactic

This is Virgin Galactic's second commercial flight, but it's the first to carry paying customers. In June, Galactic 01 carried a three-person crew from the Italian Air Force and the National Research Council of Italy.

Before that, the company's space plane had only flown employees and its billionaire founder, Richard Branson.

Virgin Galactic plans to fly paying customers to the edge of space every month.

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The passengers are 80-year-old British Olympian Jon Goodwin and mother-daughter duo Keisha Schahaff and Anastatia Mayers.

The passengers are 80-year-old British Olympian Jon Goodwin and mother-daughter duo Keisha Schahaff and Anastatia Mayers.
These are the passengers set to fly aboard Virgin Galactic's first private tourist spaceflight.Virgin Galactic

Goodwin competed in canoeing in the 1972 Munich games. He is set to be the first Olympian to travel to the edge of space, and the second person with Parkinson's disease.

Goodwin bought his ticket 18 years ago for $250,000, making him the fourth person to snatch a commercial seat on a Virgin Galactic flight, he told Sky News. He added that he "certainly did" worry it would never happen.

Schahaff is a health and wellness coach. She won two tickets in a raffle to raise funds for the nonprofit Space for Humanity. She's bringing her 18-year-old daughter, Mayers, who is a philosophy and physics student at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland.

They will be the first people from Antigua and Barbuda to take a spaceflight, according to Virgin Galactic.

The trio participated in a five-day readiness program in New Mexico, designed to prepare them "physically, mentally and spiritually" for the trip, according to the company.

Beth Moses, Chief Astronaut Instructor for Virgin Galactic, is set to join the passengers in the cabin of the VSS Unity for the flight. The company's pilots CJ Sturckow and Kelly Latimer are slated to fly the space plane.

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