But Powered Tests Will Not Be Conducted Until 2017 At The Earliest, Company Says

The replacement suborbital spacecraft built by Scaled Composites for Virgin Galactic could begin flight testing as early as next month ... but powered flight will likely not occur until sometime in 2017, according to the company.

Bloomberg reports that Virgin Galactic vice president Jonathan Firth said ground testing is expected to be completed in August, at which time flight testing while attached to another aircraft will get underway. The first powered flights of the spacecraft, dubbed "Unity" by professor Stephen Hawking earlier this year, will not take place until sometime in 2017 at the earliest, but no firm date has been set, Firth said. In an interview in London, Firth told Bloomberg that the company has set so many dates in the past that have not been met that "we're being a bit more conservative this time."

VSS Unity is very similar in design to SpaceShipTwo, which completed about 30 powered test flights before going down in the desert when a braking mechanism was activated prematurely on October 31, 2014, and it broke up in flight. One pilot survived that accident, while one was fatally injured.

(Images from file)

FMI: www.virgingalactic.com