Thursday marked an exciting milestone for Virgin Galactic. For the first time, a spaceship built by The Spaceship Company, and operated by its parent company, Virgin Galactic, has taken to the skies.
SpaceShipTwo doesn’t launch from a pad on the ground, but rather from under the wing of a carrier aircraft, WhiteKnightTwo. Thursday's flight test was what is called a ‘captive carry’ flight, during which VSS Unity remained mated to the WhiteKnightTwo mothership for the entire flight from takeoff to landing. After a year of work by her family and an act of Congress sponsored by Arizona Republican Representative Martha McSally, the cremains of WASP pilot Elaine Harmon have finally been placed at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. Harmon passed away last year at the age of 95. She flew military support and training missions during World War-Two, but was not technically a member of the armed services. WASPs were granted that status retroactively in 1997, and had regularly been buried at Arlington, but Army officials changed that policy in 2015, citing limited space at the cemetery. The new FAR 107 which regulates the non-recreational operation of small unmanned aerial systems was
released only a couple of weeks ago. Now, it’s reported the FAA is considering modifying its UAV rules to allow flight over crowds, according to Administrator Michael Huerta. At a speech at the Interdrone Conference in Las Vegas this week, Huerta said that the proposal would be released by the end of the year. All this -- and MORE in today's episode of Airborne!!!
Airborne 09.12.16 is chock full of info in this Daily News Episode, Monday, September 12th, 2016... Presented by Aero-TV veteran videographer and Airborne Hosts Brianne Cross and Christopher Odom, and supported by ANN CEO/Editor-In-Chief Jim Campbell, Chief Videographer Nathan Cremisino, and Aero-Journalists Tom Patton, and Earl Downs, this episode covers:
- VSS Unity’s First Flight Test Completed
- WASP Pilot Finally At Rest At Arlington National Cemetery
- Huerta Hints At New UAV Rules In Las Vegas Speech
- Airlander 10 Will Take Three To Four Months To Repair
- AVW: Vulcan XH558 Beachy Head Flypasts, Eastbourne Airshow 2015
- New ACS Instrument Practical Test Checkride Course Launched
- Lockheed Martin Sponsors Able Flight Scholarship
- Certifiable Predator B Successfully Completes Aircraft Integration
- TAI Hürkus Aircraft With Universal Avionics Flight Deck Obtains TC
- Drop The Chalupa ... Project Wing Partners With VPI To Test Drone Food Delivery
Get Comprehensive, Real-Time, 24/7 coverage of the latest aviation and aerospace stories anytime, at aero-news.net. And be sure to join us again next week for the next edition of "Airborne Unlimited" here on Aero-TV. Thanks for watching. See you, again, tomorrow!
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ANN's Daily Aero-Term (07.10.25): Performance-Based Navigation (PBN) [ICAO]
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