The Bite Magazine - Spring 2019 - Issue 24

Jada Brookes gets caught up with the development of the VSS Unity’s missions to space and their many achievements since they first launched. SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity AND THE FLIGHT GOES ON bite travel F ollowing July 2018’s third rock- et-powered flight, Virgin Galactic conducted its fourth powered test flight and the first space flight of its commercial SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity in December 2018. It has been a long-anticipat- ed dream as well as history in the making for Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Galactic and The Spaceship Company (TSC) as they welcomed home their spacecraft from her maiden spaceflight which surpassed the 50 miles (80 km) altitude considered the boundary of outer space by NASA and the United States Air Force. Not only was this the first human spaceflight to be launched from American soil since the final Space Shuttle mission in 2011 but also the first time that a crewed vehicle built for commercial, passenger service, has reached space. This historic achievement recognised by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) saw pilots Mark ‘Forger’ Stucky and Frederick ‘CJ’ Sturckow presented with FAA Commercial Astronaut Wings by the U.S. Department of Transportation at a ceremony in Washington D.C. in February 2019. The Commercial Astronaut Wings awards have only been earned on two previous occasions in 2004 but this latest presentation carried the additional significance of mark- ing the first crewed spaceflight since 2011. The test flight on 13th December 2018 saw Forger become the 568th human in space and along with CJ, the first humans to reach space in a vehicle built for commercial pas- senger service. CJ is also the first astronaut to hold both commercial space and Naval Aviator Wings, having flown as a pilot on four NASA Space Shuttle missions to the ISS. “Receiving commercial Astronaut Wings is an honour for me as it is an acknowledge- ment of a personal achievement. But it goes beyond that, it’s really an acknowledgement of a company achievement of Sir Richard Branson’s vision which was made possible by the conceptual design genius of Burt Rutan, the detailed design of Jim Tighe, Bob Morgan and numerous other extremely bright and hardworking engineers at Scaled Composites, and then ultimately improved upon, built, and flight tested by the men and women of The Spaceship Company and Virgin Galactic. And these wings are really dedicated to them.” While CJ added, “It was a great flight and I can’t wait to do it again,” Sir Richard Branson who accompanied the pilots to the ceremony said, “The US leads the world both in the