New Space and Tech

Virgin Galactic Completes Third Commercial Flight

By Douglas Messier

SpaceRef

September 8, 2023

Filed under human spaceflight, Space Tourism, suborbital flights, Virgin Galactic

Virgin Galactic Completes Third Commercial Flight — VSS Unity during its third commercial flight on September 8, 2023.

Image credit: Virgin Galactic.

Virgin Galactic completed its third commercial spaceflight on Friday (September 8), flying three of its 100 “founder astronauts” on a suborbital tourism flight from Spaceport America in New Mexico.

Passengers on the suborbital flight included American Ken Baxter, Adrian Reynard of Great Britain, and Timothy Nash, a British citizen from South Africa.

Baxter, 74, is a Las Vegas real estate investor. On his website, he said was the first person to purchase a ticket from Virgin Galactic in 2004.

Passengers on VSS Unity's third commercial flight. Image credit: Virgin Galactic. — *Passengers on VSS Unity’s third commercial flight. Image credit: Virgin Galactic.*

Reynard, 72, is a former race car driver and founder of Reynard Motorsport, which manufactured race cars until it ceased operations in 2002. He is chairman of Auto Research Center LLC, which is located in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Nash, 64, is an entrepreneur who is a member of National Geographic’s advisory board. He carried fossilized bones of ancient humans in his pocket during the flight, according to a story published by National Geographic published after SpaceShipTwo landed.

All three men were among Virgin Galactic’s 100 founder astronauts, early adopters who paid for tickets in full more than a decade ago. Ticket prices started out at $200,000, were raised to $250,000 in 2013, and were hiked again to $450,000 in 2021.

Chief Astronaut Instructor Beth Moses joined them in the passenger cabin. Spaceship VSS Unity was commanded by Nicola Pecile with pilot Michael Masucci. The VMS Eve mothership was commanded by Jameel Janjua with pilot Kelly Latimer.

VMS Eve took off at 8:34 AM MDT (10:34 AM EDT) and released VSS Unity at an altitude of 44,867 ft (13.68 km). The spaceship reached an altitude of 55 miles (88.5 km) and a top speed of Mach 2.95. VSS Unity glided to a landing back at Spaceport America at 9:36 AM MDT (11:36 AM EDT).

Publicity was low key for this flight in comparison to previous ones. Virgin Galactic did not announce the names of the three passengers until after SpaceShipTwo landed. There was also no live stream of the flight as the company had done for previous ones.

“What a thrilling day for our three new private astronauts and the entire team at Virgin Galactic. It’s an honor to see our ‘Galactic 03’ crew realize their lifelong dreams of spaceflight as they inspire our manifest of Future Astronauts. Each successful flight shows how powerful and personally transformative space travel can be, and we look forward to scaling our operations and making space travel more accessible to people around the world,” CEO Michael Colglazier said.

Virgin Galactic said VSS Unity’s fourth commercial flight is scheduled for early October.

Douglas Messier

Douglas Messier is the founder of Parabolic Arc. He studied at George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute and is an alumnus of the International Space University.