Virgin Galactic 06 ready to fly
January 26, 2024
By Chris Forrester
Virgin Galactic has confirmed that subject to the usual last-minute weather considerations, its ‘Galactic 06’ flight window will open on January 26th.
This will be the Company’s eleventh spaceflight to date and will follow a year of unprecedented human spaceflight achievements that included six suborbital spaceflights in six months. Four private astronauts from three different countries will journey to space on Virgin Galactic’s sixth commercial spaceflight.
The astronauts come from the Ukraine, Austria, Texas and California.
The Virgin Galactic crew will include:
- VSS Unity Commander CJ Sturckow and pilot Nicola Pecile
- VMS Eve Commander Michael Masucci and pilot Dan Alix
Michael Colglazier, CEO of Virgin Galactic, said: “Our inaugural year of commercial service demonstrated our spaceflight system’s ability to regularly deliver a safe and unparalleled customer experience for our astronauts and established new turn time records for reuseable human spaceflight systems. We’re excited to begin 2024 by bringing four new Virgin Galactic astronauts to space with our ‘Galactic 06’ mission.”
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo is a Scaled Composites Model 339 SpaceShipTwo (SS2) which is an air-launched suborbital spaceplane type designed for space tourism. It is manufactured by The Spaceship Company, a California-based company owned by Virgin Galactic.