Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

VSS Unity begins to stretch its legs with the first tests conducted out of the Air and Space Port hangar in Mojave, California.
Credit: Virgin Galactic

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (FAA-AST) has awarded Virgin Galactic an operating license for SpaceShipTwo – a passenger-carrying suborbital space ship.

In an August 1 statement from Virgin Galactic, Virgin Galactic Senior Vice President of Operations Mike Moses reports:

“The granting of our operator license is an important milestone for Virgin Galactic, as is our first taxi test for our new spaceship. 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,” Moses said.

“August is off to a good start! More on recent progress & ongoing testing coming soon,” says a Virgin Galactic blog today.

New vehicle

In late October of 2014, the SpaceShipTwo program suffered a major catastrophe, killing one pilot and seriously injuring the other.

The license award announced today comes as the new vehicle — VSS Unity — begins to stretch its legs with the first tests conducted out of the Air and Space Port hangar in Mojave, California.

Virgin Galactic’s suborbital vehicle – VSS Unity.
Credit: Virgin Galactic

Unity conducted the first taxi test today to evaluate and calibrate the navigation and communications/telemetry systems, according to Virgin Galactic.

License review process

“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,” adds the Virgin Galactic press statement. “The license review process consists of an in-depth review of the vehicle’s system design, safety analysis and flight trajectory analysis, culminating in FAA-AST approval.”

Virgin Galactic was founded by Sir Richard Branson and owned by the Virgin Group and Aabar Investments PJS.

Earlier image of Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic.
Credit: Virgin Galactic

To date, 700 men and women from over 50 countries have reserved places to fly on Virgin Galactic’s reusable space launch system, consisting of carrier aircraft WhiteKnightTwo and spacecraft SpaceShipTwo.

SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo are manufactured and tested in Mojave, California by its manufacturing wing, The Spaceship Company. Spaceflight operations will be based at Spaceport America in New Mexico, the world’s first purpose-built commercial spaceport.