Virgin Galactic Schedules May-End Earth Orbit Launch With Six Astronauts

JAKARTA - Virgin Galactic has woken up from sleep, planning to fly astronauts into space for the first time in nearly two years. The plan is to take place later this month.

Scheduled for late May, two pilots and crew of four Virgin Galactic employees will board the VSS Unity spacecraft on a mission dubbed Unity 25.

The pilots are CJ Sturckow and Mike Masucci, as well as four Virgin Galactic employees namely Jamila Gilbert, a native of New Mexico who works in the company's internal communications department, Chris Hume, an aviation science engineer and the son of Jamaican immigrant Luke Mays.

Joined also an astronaut instructor and former NASA employee and Beth Moses, the company's chief astronaut training officer, who had been on two previous flights.

On a short flight to the suborbital space, they will use two vehicles, a piloted spacecraft called VSS Unity and a transport plane known as VMS Eve.

VMS Eve will transport Unity to an altitude of about 15,000 meters, then drop the spacecraft, which is heading into suborbital space.

Passengers in Unity will experience several minutes of weightlessness and see Earth behind the darkness of space before the vehicle returns to Earth to land on the runway.

At the launch, the company expects to be the last test before Virgin Galactic can open rides for paying customers after years and past the deadline.

To make it happen, billionaire owner Richard Branson sold most of his original shares in the company, as quoted by Space and CNN International, Tuesday, May 9.

If all goes well, Virgin Galactic hopes to start commercial services from the spaceport in New Mexico by the end of June. The mission will take off from Spaceport America in New Mexico, Virgin Galactic's commercial operations center.