Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, August 29 (Xinhua)-- Virgin Galactic announced today that it plans to conduct its third commercial space flight and its eighth space mission on September 8.

Galaxy 03 will be launched from the spaceport of New Mexico in the United States, carrying three paying passengers to and from suborbital space. Virgin Galactic has not identified the passengers, but they have been holding tickets for a long time.

"these three passengers are the first members of Virgin Galactic's' founder 'astronaut team-they are the first customers to buy air tickets and help realize their dream of regular commercial space flight," Virgin Galactic wrote in a statement today. " The company added: "the three passengers bought air tickets as early as 2005 and have been actively participating in the company's vibrant future astronaut community." The trio will be Virgin Galactic's 14th, 15th and 16th astronauts. They will fly with Colin Bennett, one of Virgin Galactic's astronaut coaches.

Passengers on this flight will be on Virgin Galactic's space plane VSS Unity, piloted by Nicola Pecile and Michael Masucci. The plane will lift off from the wing of the company's carrier VMS Eve and then separate at an altitude of about 50, 000 feet (CTOnews.com Note: about 15000 meters). VSS Unity will ignite its own rocket engine and fly into suborbital space. Passengers will experience weightlessness for a few minutes, enjoy the earth in the dark space, and then return to the ground and land at the American spaceport.

The last such flight took place on August 10, when Virgin Galactic carried a former Olympian and a mother and daughter into space for the first time, the daughter of an 18-year-old college student, according to Virgin Galactic, her youngest astronaut ever.

Virgin Galactic is currently selling tickets for $450000 (currently about 3.281 million yuan), but given that the three passengers on the flight are all founder astronauts, they may not have paid that much. because the price of the ticket has risen many times in the past few years.

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