Virgin Galactic Unity 21
2021 American crewed sub-orbital spaceflight
Virgin Galactic Unity 21 was a sub-orbital spaceflight of the SpaceShipTwo-class VSS Unity which took place on 22 May 2021, piloted by David Mackay and co-piloted by Frederick Sturckow. It was the first human spaceflight from the state of New Mexico. It was operated by Virgin Galactic, a private company led by Richard Branson which intends to conduct space tourism flights in the future. Unity 21 was the first human spaceflight to be launched from Spaceport America.
Reaching an apogee of 55.45 mi (89.24 km), the flight satisfied the United States definition of spaceflight (50 mi (80.47 km)), but fell short of the Kármán line (100 km (62.14 mi)), the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale definition.
01Crew
| Position | Astronaut | |
|---|---|---|
| Pilot | Frederick Sturckow Sixth spaceflight | |
| Co-pilot | David Mackay Second spaceflight | |
02Flight
On 22 May 2021, Unity's mother ship VMS Eve carried it into flight in a parasite configuration. At 15:26 UTC, Unity was drop launched. Pilots MacKay and Sturckow flew Unity at a maximum speed of Mach 3 to a maximum altitude of over 89.23 km (292,700 ft). This altitude surpassed the 50-mile limit used in the United States to denote the limit of space, but fell short of the Kármán line. Both craft landed safely afterwards.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Virgin Galactic Unity 21”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo "Unity" rollout 19Feb2016, FAITH hangar, Mojave, California.jpg by Ronrosano, CC BY-SA 3.0
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