{"id":65548,"date":"2018-04-07T01:51:18","date_gmt":"2018-04-06T17:51:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/virgin-galactics-comeback-to-supersonic-flight\/"},"modified":"2018-04-07T01:51:18","modified_gmt":"2018-04-06T17:51:18","slug":"virgin-galactics-comeback-to-supersonic-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/virgin-galactics-comeback-to-supersonic-flight\/","title":{"rendered":"Virgin Galactic\u2019s Comeback to Supersonic Flight"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<p><strong>Virgin Galactic <\/strong>successfully conducted a supersonic flight of its spacecraft this week \u2014 marking the company\u2019s first return to the skies after a fatal crash four years ago. After two years of ground and atmospheric testing, the passing of this milestone marks the start of the final portion of&nbsp;VSS Unity\u2019s flight test program.<\/p>\n<p>Attached to Virgin Galactic\u2019s WhiteKnight Two carrier aircraft, VMS Eve, VSS Unity took off from a Mojave launch strip the morning of April 5, piloted by Mark \u201cForger\u201d Stucky and Dave Mackay. The mated vehicles climbed to a launch altitude of around 46,500ft over the Sierra Nevada Mountains before Eve executed a clean release of&nbsp;Unity. After a few seconds,&nbsp;Unity kickstarted its rocket motor and the pilots aimed the spaceship upwards into an 80 degree climb, accelerating to Mach 1.87 during the 30 seconds of rocket burn.<\/p>\n<p>On rocket shutdown,&nbsp;Unity&nbsp;continued an upward coast to an apogee of 84,271ft before readying for the downhill return. At this stage, the pilots raised the vehicle\u2019s tail booms to a 60 degree angle to the fuselage (the \u201cfeathered\u201d configuration). This design feature, which is key to a reliable and repeatable re-entry capability for a winged vehicle, was the cause of the fatal crash in 2014.<\/p>\n<p>According to the <strong>National Transportation Safety Board<\/strong> (NTSB), a premature repositioning of these tail booms, which are meant to slow the spacecraft down upon re-entry, caused VSS Enterprise to violently rip apart. The upgraded tail boom design incorporates additional safety mechanisms adopted after the 2014 accident, Virgin Galactic stated.<\/p>\n<p>Virgin Galactic engineers are currently reviewing the data on flight, motor and vehicle performance after this week\u2019s successful flight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Virgin Galactic successfully conducted a supersonic flight of its spacecraft this week \u2014 marking the company\u2019s first return to the skies after a fatal crash four years ago. After two years of ground and atmospheric testing, the passing of this milestone marks the start of the final portion of&nbsp;VSS Unity\u2019s flight test program. Attached to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":65549,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65548"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}