New Spaceship Conducts Taxi Test As It Nears Start Of Flight Test Program

Virgin Galactic kicked off August with two important milestones.

The FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (FAA-AST) has awarded Virgin Galactic an operator license for SpaceShipTwo. The license award, which will ultimately permit commercial operations of the vehicle, was the culmination of several years of in-depth interaction with the FAA.  The license review process consists of an in-depth review of the vehicles system design, safety analysis and flight trajectory analysis, culminating in FAA-AST approval.

Just prior to learning of the FAA's action, the team conducted a taxi test with SpaceShipTwo (VSS Unity). This test is an important step towards the flight test program.

"We couldn’t be more proud of our team and their hard work to reach both milestones," the company said in a news release.

“The granting of our operator license is an important milestone for Virgin Galactic, as is our first taxi test for our new spaceship," said Virgin Galactic Senior Vice President of Operations Mike Moses. "While we still have much work ahead to fully test this spaceship in flight, I am confident that our world-class team is up to the challenge.”

(Image provided with Virgin Galactic news release)

FMI: www.virgingalactic.com