Virgin Galactic’s spaceflight system in the air.
Virgin Galactic
The long-awaited rocket flight over the southern New Mexico desert on Saturday was much shorter than that. Virgin Galactic And its founder, Richard Branson, had hope.
The company’s White Knightton 2 aircraft took off Spaceport America Passenger spacecraft taking the spaceship Unity at 7:24 p.m. The pair then spent about 45 minutes climbing over 40,000 feet (12,192 meters).
About 50 minutes after takeoff, a live stream of NASSpaceflight.com showed up for about a second before the unit detached and fired its rocket engine early.
The company later said on Twitter that “the boardboard computer of SpaceshipT Unity monitors the rocket motor that loses connection after it is released from maternity leave.” “As designed, this caused a fail-safe scenario that intentionally stopped the ignition of the rocket motor.”
After her maternity leave, SpaceshipTunity’s boardboard computer monitors the rocket motor’s connection being lost. According to the design, this provoked a fail-safe scenario that intentionally prevented the ignition of the rocket motor.
– Virgin Galactic (@ViringGalactic) December 12, 2020
Unity returned to landing at Spaceport America, and the company confirmed that all pilots and vehicles are safe and secure.
“As we do with each test flight, we are evaluating all data, including assessing the root cause of the computer communication loss.” The company added. “We look forward to sharing information on our next flight window in the near future.”
After years of development and delay Fatal accident And now Nationwide epidemic of Kovid-19, Hoping the company would send Branson and then pay customers into space by 2020, cut off just before the test aircraft was skipped.
Virgin has completed test flights operated from California. But its goal is to make two test flights from its commercial home base in New Mexico, before Branson finally takes what has been awaited (and is being paid) since the company was founded in 2004.
Saturday’s flight also had some small payloads for NASA. It is not yet clear when the company will try.
