New SpaceShipTwo Glide Test Successful

Officials at Virgin Galactic, one of the world's leading private spaceflight companies, announce that their SpaceShipTwo suborbital aircraft managed to successfully complete a new drop and glide test.

This is yet another important milestone that Virgin waltzes past, in preparation for beginning commercial space flights for paying customers within a couple of years. The drop test took place yesterday, January 13.

Virgin Galactic is not at its first attempt of this kind. Several other flight tests have seen the SpaceShipTwo being dropped from its carrier, the WhiteKnightTwo.

The private company has taken an interesting approach to providing its customers with up to 4 minutes of weightlessness for $200,000. They developed an aircraft that carries another aircraft underneath it.

The former takes off like a regular airplane, and then heads up into the upper atmosphere. As it reaches its maximum altitude, it drops the aircraft underneath (the SpaceShipTwo), which then promptly ignites its own engines.

According to Virgin, the motors provide sufficient boost to raise the craft to suborbital altitudes, where it remains for 3 to 4 minutes. During this time, paying customers can admire the view through a multitude of windows on the aircraft.

Mojave, California-based company Scaled Composites designed and built the SpaceShipTwo, which is bound to become the first space ferry in use. Tens of potential clients have already paid the full fare, and reserved seats on the first few flights.

The January 13 flight test took place at 8 am PST (1600 GMT), when a high-altitude-flying WhiteKnightTwo dropped its payload for a controlled glide back to the Mojave Air and Space Port.

The facility, which mainly houses Virgin Galactic, is currently being built in the Mojave Desert to support the burgeoning private spaceflight industry currently developing in the United States.

“We had another great flight today, piloted by Mark Stucky and co-pilot Clint Nichols ?a good start for what will be a busy year of flight tests,” explains the CEO and president of Virgin Galactic, George Whitesides.

Spaceport America is scheduled to be completed this year. The state-of-the-art facility will have terminals from which customers will be able to embark on various suborbital vehicles, as they are completed, Space reports.