Virgin Galactic put spacewalks on hold

Space tourism is not a very easy business to manage. Virgin Galactic, a space tourism company, flew its last flight last week before a two-year hiatus from commercial operations to develop a new class of more cost-effective space vehicles.

"Galactic 07 is back on the ground, now with astronauts. Our pilots, passengers and the vehicle have landed safely at Spaceport America, in the state of Nex Mexico," Virgin Galactic announced. The carrier aircraft took off from this state in the southwestern United States at 08:31 local time from a classic runway, then, after an ascent of about 50 minutes to an altitude of 13,582 meters, released the vehicle placed below it, called VSS Unity. The latter, carrying two pilots and four passengers, started its engine and accelerated vertically until it reached an altitude of almost 88 kilometers - just above the 80 kilometer threshold that marks the border with space, according to the definition used by the military american After a few minutes, which allowed the passengers to float in weightlessness and admire the curvature of the Earth, the vehicle re-entered the atmosphere and landed on the same runway. VSS Unity reached a maximum speed of Mach 2.96, nearly three times the speed of sound. Only the name of one passenger had been revealed before the flight: the Turkish Tuva Atasever, mandated by the American company Axiom Space to carry out several scientific experiments. According to a press release from Virgin Galactic, he carried sensors into space for monitoring brain data in microgravity conditions. The spacecraft also carried experiments by researchers from the American Purdue and Berkeley universities into orbit. The company Virgin Galactic, founded in 2004 by the British billionaire Richard Branson, had only specified that two other passengers came from the United States and that the fourth was originally from Italy.

Once the mission was over, the identities of the three passengers - all of them men - were revealed. According to the Virgin Galactic website, Andy Sadhwani is a propulsion systems engineer at SpaceX who previously worked for NASA. Irving Izchak Pergament is a real estate developer and airline pilot, and Giorgio Manenti is an investment advisor in hotels and restaurants.

Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier had announced before Saturday's flight that the commercial mission - the seventh in the company's history - would be the last for the VSS Unity vehicle. "This is a turning point for the company as we fully commit all our resources to the production of the new next-generation Delta space vehicles, which are expected to enter commercial service in 2026," he added. The Delta vehicles will be able to carry six passengers on board instead of the four carried by the VSS Unity, according to Virgin Galactic, which plans to initially build two such vehicles. The company intends to carry out then up to 125 flights per year. Test flights are scheduled for 2025. Virgin Galactic competes in the sector of short suborbital flights with Blue Origin, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos.