Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic Flight Path Examined by FAA
Company says winds altered flight for about two minutes
Aviation regulators are investigating how Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc.’s spacecraft returned to the ground after taking billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson to the edge of space, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration said.
Virgin Galactic’s Unity space vessel deviated from the flight path it agreed to follow as it came back to the Spaceport America facility in New Mexico on July 11, according to the FAA spokesman. Five other crew members were on board with Mr. Branson, Virgin Galactic’s founder. The mission, called Unity 22, drew widespread attention.
The FAA would be concerned about a spacecraft not following an expected path during re-entry if that shift could potentially affect public safety, according to a person familiar with the agency’s processes. The FAA licenses commercial space operations, including launches and re-entries of spacecraft, restricting airspace for those flights.
As it returned to Earth, the Unity space vehicle flew below the altitude of the airspace protected for the flight for one minute and 41 seconds because of winds before re-entering the restricted airspace, a spokeswoman for Virgin Galactic said. It didn’t fly outside of geographic confines that had been established for the flight, meaning it never flew above population centers, she added.
Although the flight’s ultimate trajectory deviated from our initial plan, it was a controlled and intentional flight path that allowed Unity 22 to successfully reach space and land safely,” she said.
The New Yorker earlier reported on the FAA’s investigation.
Virgin Galactic has staked much of its future on space tourism, betting that some consumers will pay to have the company fly them more than 50 miles up, where they can take in views and move through zero gravity for a few minutes before returning to Earth. Last month, the company said it would charge consumers at least $450,000 per seat on future flights, more than what it had sought for tickets in the past.
The company uses a twin-fuselage space plane to carry a spacecraft to an altitude of about 45,000 feet, where a spacecraft drops from it and is propelled by a rocket into space. Company pilots fly both the plane and the spacecraft, which returns to Earth by gliding down.