Scientists Sign Deal to Fly Aboard Virgin Galactic Spacecraft

Officials with Virgin Galactic announced recently that the company has just signed an agreement with the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) of Colorado, for several seats on the upcoming suborbital flights that the corporation is scheduled to being flying.

At this point, Virgin is constructing and testing its own fleet of reusable, private spacecraft, that are capable of reaching suborbital altitudes for short periods of time. Paying passengers can experience weightlessness for up to 4 minutes or so.

The commercial enterprise is focused on selling as many seats on upcoming flights as possible. At $200,000 per passenger, the price tag is significantly lower than the $35 million the Russian space agency used to ask for a seat on a Soyuz spacecraft, and a visit to the ISS.

SwRI seized this opportunity to ink a deal with Virgin, for two spots on the upcoming flights the WhiteKnightTwo / SpaceShipTwo combo is scheduled to take on. Six more seats are reserved for the Institute for a later date.

The goal of this collaboration is to fly scientists to the lower edge of space, in order to conduct a series of investigations that would be impossible to conduct in Earth's gravity. The SwRI-Virgin deal is estimated to worth about $1.6 million.

“This agreement signals the enormous scientific potential of the Virgin spaceflight system,” explains the president and CEO of Virgin Galactic, George Whitesides.

“Science flights will be an important growth area for the company in the years to come, building on the strong commercial success already demonstrated by deposits received from over 400 individuals for Virgin's space experience,” he adds in a statement.

“We at SwRI are very excited about this agreement. Initially, two of our payload specialists will be flying on Virgin Galactic, conducting biomedical monitoring, atmospheric imaging, and microgravity planetary regolith experiments,” says Alan Stern.

The expert holds an appointment as a scientist at the SwRI, where he is also the vice-president of the Space Division. Stern is also one of the two scientists that will fly towards low-Earth orbit (LEO).

“We've already designed and built three experiments to fly on these flights,” he concludes, quoted by Space.