Virgin Galactic is set to launch SpaceShipTwo, the first commercial suborbital spaceflight, on June 29, which will show the vehicle’s readiness for commercial operations alongside its role as a research platform. On June 28, the company completed preparations for the Galactic 01 mission, the second suborbital flight of the company’s SpaceShipTwo spacecraft in months. Virgin named the flight as the company’s transition to long-term commercial operations after a lengthy testing campaign.

Virgin Galactic plans to lift the VMS Eve mothership with the VSS Unity spacecraft around 10:30 am on June 29. Unity will leave Eve in about an hour, fire its hybrid rocket engine for suborbital flight, and then return to the spaceport.

Galactic Mission 01, Virgin Galactic’s first fully commercial flight, will carry three Italian cargo experts on board to conduct a series of experiments. Walter Villadei and Angelo Landolfi of the Italian Air Force and Pantaleone Carlucci of the Italian National Research Council plan to conduct 13 experiments, from biomedical data collection to in-flight microgravity combustion studies.

In the cabin they will be accompanied by Virgin Galactic astronaut instructor Colin Bennett, who was on the Unity flight in July 2021 carrying company founder Richard Branson. This will evaluate the research flight experience during the flight.

While much of Virgin Galactic’s business will consist of private astronaut flights – the company has about 800 people registered for suborbital flights – the company says research flights like the Galactic 01 will be an important part of its business.

“It’s ideal if this first commercial mission is exploratory. “It shows that this is another lab setting for science and technology where we can invest in people on Earth,” Sirisha Bandla, vice president of government relations and research operations at Virgin Galactic, said in an interview on June 28.

The company has flown research payloads on previous test flights, such as those provided by NASA’s Flight Opportunities program. This includes Bandla’s work on the July 2021 flight. However, this task is dedicated to conducting research using a testing program developed by an Italian team. “It’s a combination of everything we’ve experienced in our space flight to date,” he said.

Bennett will be on board to watch the Italian freight forwarders do their job. “He will look at how everyone is moving in the cabin, do the research and do a holistic assessment of the research task so that we can continually improve the experience,” he said.

Much of the training for research flights is the same as for private astronaut flights. Bandla said the main difference is that the researchers “choreographed” the actions during their short flight while simultaneously testing the safety of the payload during the experiments.

Once the company returns to its normal operations, it plans to conduct research flights on a fixed schedule interspersed with special astronaut missions. “The goal is to have it at the same time each year that researchers can distribute their grants and proposals through any institution that funds their research and have predictable and reliable access to their science,” he said.

He added that the emphasis is on a fixed frequency of flights, both for researchers who want to test experiments before launching into orbit, and for those for whom suborbital flights are sufficient. “The most important thing we hear is that we want constant and regular access to space,” he said of feedback from the research community. Source