Virgin Galactic's 6th Commercial Spaceflight To Launch January 26

Virgin Galactic's 6th commercial spaceflight has finalized plans to launch by end of January 2024, with
four private astronauts as part of the trip.

The launch of the commercial spaceflight, called Galactic-06, is expected to show the technical advancements in leading economies.

The exciting mission will take four paying customers to suborbital space and will bring them back.

The company, part of Richard Branson's Virgin Group, had a successful run of six spaceflights in just six months in 2023 and
private astronauts from Texas, California, Austria, and a joint participant from Ukraine and California will be part of Galactic 06. However, their names are yet to be revealed, said the group's spoke person.

It is established that Virgin Galactic's spaceflight system comprises two components.
The spaceflight system comprises a two-pilot, six-passenger spacecraft called VSS Unity. A carrier plane, called VMS Eve, launches Unity off the ground.
VMS Eve carries VSS Unity up to an altitude of about 50,000 feet and then releases it. Unity then fires its onboard engines to head to suborbital space.

Although it won't reach orbit, passengers aboard Unity can get stunning views of Earth from space and can experience several minutes of weightlessness, before returning to Earth.

The Unity space plane will be led by Commander C.J. Sturckow and Pilot Nicola Pecile while, the Eve carrier plane, will be commanded by Michael Masucci and piloted by Dan Alix.

There are future plans by Galactic
Virgin Galactic to ground Unity in 2024 after perhaps two more flights. The company will then focus on creating the next-gen "Delta class" space plane.
Once ready, Delta-class vehicles could fly twice a week compared to Unity's monthly flight.
Delta can carry six customers, and is said to be able to generate 12 times more revenue per month than Unity.

Test flights for Delta vehicles are expected to kick off in 2025, with full operational service starting in 2026.

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