The Billionaire Space Race is nearing completion, and Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson is ready to fly into the blue aboard the first fully manned flight of his SpaceShipTwo aircraft, Unity 22, on Sunday.
Branson, 70, will embark on a brief but historic suborbital mission with three crew members and two pilots.
Fellow travelers include Beth Moses, Virgin Galactic’s senior astronaut instructor; Colin Bennett, Virgin Galactic Senior Operations Engineer; and Sirisha Bandla, Vice President of Government Affairs of Indian Origin and research operations in the company. VSS Unity is piloted by Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci.
Branson’s long-awaited trip into space would allow him to beat Amazon founder Jeff Bezos by nine days; The latter is to fly on July 20, the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, with the space probe of his company Blue Origin.
The flight of Unity 22 to the edge of space is broadcast live.
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WHEN AND WHERE CAN I SEE UNITY 22 LAUNCH?
While Virgin Galactic has yet to announce take-off and landing times, the broadcast begins live on Sunday at 9 a.m. EDT (6:30 p.m. IST), according to the company’s Twitter feed.
The livestream will be broadcast on the company’s website – virginatlantic.com – and will also be broadcast on Virgin Galactic’s Twitter, YouTube and Facebook channels.
Wake up and watch the start of the next space age! Our crew from # Unit22 Mission specialists including @Richard Branson are only a few hours away from our test flight start.
Watch live at 6 a.m. PT tomorrow | 9 p.m. ET | 2:00 p.m. BST https://t.co/5UalYT7Hjb. pic.twitter.com/mtpHIzjADa
– Virgin Galactic (@virgingalactic) July 10, 2021
The flight is visible worldwide at these times:
- London: 2 p.m.
- Johannesburg: 3 p.m.
- Moscow: 4 p.m.
- Dubai: 5 p.m.
- Beijing: 9 p.m.
- Tokyo: 10 p.m.
- Sydney: 11 p.m.
Just a week before his 71st birthday, the London-born founder of the Virgin Group says he is “not worried at all and going into space is the dream of a lifetime”.
THE FLIGHT PLAN
Virgin Galactic’s twin-hull WhiteKnight carrier aircraft will take off Sunday morning from Spaceport America, the company’s New Mexico spaceport. The WhiteKnight aircraft, VMS Eve, will carry a rocket-powered spacecraft called the VSS Unity with Branson and others on board.
About 40 minutes after launch, Unity will drop off the center of the mothership and shortly thereafter fire its rocket motor to send Branson and the crew to the edge of space about 90 miles up for a few minutes of weightlessness. Then, like any normal airliner, Unity will return to a runway at Spaceport America.
Based on data from previous missions, Branson has stated that the entire flight will take about 90 minutes.
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THE RACE FOR SPACE
The suborbital flight agenda is to promote space tourism, and Branson is trying to make sure that both potential customers and those who can’t afford a ticket see a good show. The live stream of the mission will be hosted by Stephen Colbert, best known for “The Late Show”, while pop star Khalid will perform a new single on stage after the successful return of Unity 22. In addition, Branson himself has promised to share “very exciting” news after his trip into space.
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Virgin Galactic, founded in 2004, has already sold around 600 tickets, each ticket costing around US $ 250,000. These would-be space tourists include Lady Gaga, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Justin Bieber, and Katy Perry, to name a few.
Branson’s Virgin Galactic is currently vying with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX for supremacy in the commercial space space.
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