Virgin Galactic

Mission Specialist Christopher Huie joined Virgin Galactic in 2017 as a Flight Sciences Engineer, and is co-founder of Virgin Galactic’s Black Leaders in Aerospace Scholarship and Training (BLAST) Program. The son of Jamaican immigrants, hailing from Florida, Chris will become the 19th Black astronaut in the world. Courtesy of Virgin Galactic.

Unity 25

Christopher Huie

United States of America

NASA

This astronaut visited the International Space Station.

ISS Visitor

This astronaut crossed the Kármán Line (100 km), the internationally accepted boundary of space.

Crossed Kármán Line

This astronaut has spent over a month in space.

Space Resident

This astronaut is in the top 5% for number of missions.

Frequent Flyer

Galactic 02

Virgin Galactic will launch a crew of four to suborbital space from New Mexico on the VSS Unity, a rocket-powered spaceplane.

SpaceShipTwo is designed for suborbital tourism flights to space. Owned by Virgin Orbit, the SpaceShipTwo has so far climbed above the U.S. border to space of 80 km but not over the 100 km internationally-recognized point where space begins.

SpaceShipTwo

STS-88 (Endeavour)

The first International Space Station construction mission. Endeavour launched the Unity module for the U.S. and met up with the first Russian station module, Zarya ("sunrise"), linking the two modules together in an historic partnership.

The first reusable launch and landing spacecraft, the Space Shuttle began a new chapter of human space exploration. It launched like a rocket but landed on a runway like a plane. Shuttle crews deployed dozens of commercial satellites and two interplanetary probes to Venus and Jupiter. The Shuttle served as a mini space station and hosted hundreds of biomedical, psychological, physiological, materials science, and physics experiments that have directly benefited life on Earth. The five flight-worthy Shuttles -- Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour -- flew 135 missions over 30 years. The Shuttles helped construct the Russian Mir space station and brought nearly 80% of the International Space Station to orbit. Shuttles also deployed and serviced the Hubble Space Telescope.

Space Shuttle

STS-105 (Discovery)

Discovery's mission rotated the Expedition 2 and 3 International Space Station crews and delivered thousands of kilograms of science supplies and experiments to the ISS.

STS-117 (Atlantis)

This Space Shuttle mission brought the S3/S4 truss, solar arrays, and batteries to the International Space Station and rotated a single U.S. crewmember. More than 7,000 divots were put in the External Tank's foam when a hail storm passed over the launch pad. The flight was delayed three months for repairs.

VSS Unity VF-03

Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity suborbital spaceship reached 89.2 km on this flight, making it a suborbital spaceflight by U.S. standards only. The U.S. marks the boundary of space at 80 km whereas the rest of the world uses the internationally recognized Kármán line at 100 km as the boundary to space. 

Galactic 06

Ukraine

Austria

STS-128 (Discovery)

This logistics and resupply mission to the International Space Station delivered numerous physics and chemistry experiments and marked the last time a Space Shuttle launched a long duration ISS crewmember. On September 11th, 2009, Discovery performed what would be the final Shuttle landing in California.

VSS Unity VP-03

Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity suborbital spaceship reached 82.7 km on this flight, making it a suborbital spaceflight by U.S. standards only. The U.S. marks the boundary of space at 80 km whereas the rest of the world uses the internationally recognized Kármán line at 100 km as the boundary to space. 

CJ Sturckow

Crossed 80km Line

Galactic 01

Italy

Unity 22

Unity 22 was Virgin Galactic's first fully crewed suborbital mission.

Galactic 05

Galactic 03

VSS Unity VF-01

Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity suborbital spaceship reached 89.99 km on this flight, making it a suborbital spaceflight by U.S. standards only. The U.S. marks the boundary of space at 80 km whereas the rest of the world uses the internationally recognized Kármán line at 100 km as the boundary to space. 

Mike Masucci

This astronaut crossed the NASA Space Line (80 km), which is the minimum altitude at which NASA considers a person to have flown in outer space.

Get the Supercluster App

Donate to Support Supercluster

Supercluster on Patreon

Fact of the Day

Want more space stories?

GET THE SUPERCLUSTER APP

THE SUPERCLUSTER PODCAST

Donate to support

The Supercluster App

Featuring our global Launch Tracker, interactive Astronaut Database, and Stations Dashboard.

Stay on top of everything leaving Earth; get mission info, countdowns, livestreams, and customized notifications that alert you when a rocket is launching or when a space station is in the skies overhead.

Download