VSS Unity’s first fully crewed flight

Virgin Galactic conducted the first fully crewed flight of VSS Unity from Spaceport America, New Mexico, on 11 July 2021, at 15:30 UTC (08:30 local time). For the first time, the second SpaceShipTwo carryies a full crew of two pilots (Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci) and four mission specialists in the cabin: Colin Bennett (Lead Operations Engineer), Beth Moses (Chief Astronaut Instructor), Richard Branson (Founder Virgin Galactic) and Sirisha Bandla (Vice President of Government Affairs and Research Operations). During the flight, it will be evaluated the human-tended research experience, using an experiment from the University of Florida. Credit: Illustration, images and video footage courtesy of Virgin Galactic #VSSUnity #Unity22