Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic's mission in space: live today

Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic's mission in space

Due to weather conditions, the departure was postponed to 4.30 pm, Italian time. On board the mission also the founder of the company, Richard Branson

Sir Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic) The departure is set for 16.30, Italian time. Unity's first commercial flight, as Virgin Galactic's SpaceShip Two rocket has been dubbed, will bring two pilots and three other passengers between 80 and 100 kilometers from Earth, one of which is the founder of the company, tycoon Richard Branson. A launch that beats by about ten days the one scheduled by Jeff Bezos for July 20 with the New Shepard of his Blue Origin and which will see on board the founder of the ecommerce giant Amazon, his brother Mark, a still anonymous passenger who has paid at auction the ticket more than 28 million dollars and the 82-year-old Wally Funk, a pioneer of the US air force who in the 60s was among the women of the Mercury 13 who proved to be able to meet the criteria established by NASA to become astronauts.

Due to weather conditions, Virgin Galactic has postponed the departure of the crew by an hour and a half, initially scheduled for 15.00 Italian time. The launch will take place from the spaceport America in New Mexico.

To follow the live launch, you can connect today to the Virgin Galactic website, or to the aerospace company's social profiles (here the links to Twitter, YouTube and Facebook ). According to what was planned, the vehicle will describe an arc and for about 4 minutes the passengers will "float" like the astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) and then re-enter the atmosphere and land.

A real flight into space?

From Blue Origin they claim that Branson's will not be a real flight into space, because Virgin Galactic's vehicles do not cross the famous Kármán line , the imaginary threshold placed at 100 kilometers above which the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale acknowledges that they have really gone into space. On the other hand, Virgin Galactic is ahead of Blue Origin's competitors also in terms of authorization. The company has already received the authorization of the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for the launch of passengers in the suborbital belt, while Blue Origin is still awaiting the green light for its activity. Let the space tourism race begin.


Space - 22 hours ago

How it works Richard Branson's mission with Virgin Galactic in space


What is the Einstein telescope, which will allow us to explore the "dark age" of the Universe


How to follow the live broadcast of Richard Branson's mission with Virgin Galactic in space

Topics

Jeff Bezos Space Virgin Galactic globalData.fldTopic = "Jeff Bezos, Space, Virgin Galactic "

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.