NASA, Virgin Galactic Partner for Suborbital Flights

Officials from private spaceflight company Virgin Galactic announced yesterday, October 13, that the American space agency has just signed a $4.5 million contract for renting several seats on upcoming suborbital flights. The sorties will be flown with the SpaceShipTwo.

Virgin and Scaled Composites are currently building the world's first commercial suborbital spaceflight fleet, comprised of SpaceShiptTwo spacecraft and WhiteKnightTwo carrier systems. A seat on each flight is currently priced at around $200,000.

NASA is very interested in conducting a large number of such flights, which is why it agreed to sign the new contract with Virgin. The agency estimates that the value of the scientific return it will receive will be well worth the costs.

According to the provisions of the new document, the space agency plans to rent up to three full flights, booking all six passenger seats on SpaceShipTwo-class vehicles. This will enable NASA to conduct its research on its own terms, without interfering with other paying customers' experiences.

The new contract marks another important achievement for the company, which only recently instated the former deputy space shuttle program chief at NASA, Mike Moses, as its vice president of operations.

“We are excited to be working with NASA to provide the research community with this opportunity to carry out experiments in space,” reads a statement from Virgin Galactic president and CEO, George Whitesides, as quoted by Space.

“An enormous range of disciplines can benefit from access to space, but historically, such research opportunities have been rare and expensive. At Virgin Galactic, we are fully dedicated to revolutionizing access to space, both for tourist astronauts and, through programs like this, for researchers,” he adds.

According to SpaceShipTwo specifications charts, each of these spacecraft is capable of carrying up to 590 kilograms (1,300 pounds) of cargo. The latter can be made up of scientific equipment, measuring instruments, and so on.

NASA estimates that its scientists could cram up to 600 different experiments in each of the three flights it booked. Virgin Galactic will be providing a flight engineer to monitor and tweak the experiments, on an as “needed” basis.