Virgin Galactic

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

Crossed Kármán Line

Colin joined Virgin Galactic in 2015 and is currently an Astronaut Instructor. He has a served a number of roles across the organization, gaining a wide range experience. He started as a Flight Control Expert, then moved into the Aerodynamics Team, led the Payload Integration Team from a technical perspective and is now finishing training to become a Flight Director. Before joining Virgin Galactic, Colin, spent four years in the Flight Operations Team at Virgin Atlantic and prior to that was part of Flight Test for the UK’s Ministry of Defense. Through these roles he has accumulated flying hours as a Flight Test Engineer across aircrafts including commercial airliners, Chinook helicopters, and the Virgin Galactic mothership, VMS Eve. He studied Aerospace Engineering at the University of Liverpool and is a qualified pilot. Caption courtesy of Virgin Galactic.

Galactic 01

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

Unity 22

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

Galactic 05

Colin Bennett

United States of America

Richard Branson is founder of Virgin Galactic. He will fly on this mission to evaluate the private civilian astronaut experience and will undergo the same training, preparation and flight as Virgin Galactic’s future astronauts. His feedback will be used to improve the overall the experience for all future astronaut customers.

Sir Richard Branson

United Kingdom

Sirisha will evaluate the human-tended research experience, using an experiment from the University of Florida that requires several handheld fixation tubes that will be activated at various points in the flight. She is the Vice President of Government Affairs and Research Operations at Virgin Galactic.

Sirisha Bandla

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.

Crossed 80km Line

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

Frequent Flyer

Beth Moses is Chief Astronaut Instructor and Interiors Program Manager for Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo program, and is a commercial astronaut. She was the first woman to make a spaceflight on a commercially launched vehicle. Courtesy of Virgin Galactic.

Galactic 02

Galactic 03

Unity 25

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. 

Galactic 04

Beth Moses

Crossed NASA Line

This astronaut is the first man from Scotland to go to space.

First Man from Scotland

Astronaut David William Donald Mackay is the British Chief Pilot of Virgin Galactic, and a former RAF test pilot. He is the first native-born Scot to visit space.

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. 

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