Virgin Galactic’s six-passenger spaceliner can now deploy its landing gear and carry its full weight on its wheels for the first time. Additionally, all of the major structural elements of SpaceShipTwo have now been assembled.
Virgin Galactic made the announcement on Wednesday with the statement: “With the spaceship now capable of bearing its own weight, the assembly team is hard at work connecting the vehicle’s integrated systems, including the flight control systems from fuselage to tail booms, as well as completing the final structural closeouts.
“As this work is completed, the spaceship will be positioned in the hangar for the start of integrated vehicle ground testing, which will verify the integrity of all systems.
“This step is a precursor to the start of its flight test program.”
Virgin Galactic already has its VSS Unity SpaceShipTwo vehicle in the latter stages of flight testing.
VSS Unity has so far completed two piloted demonstration missions to suborbital space and back.
Unity is currently in the pioneering commercial space company’s Mojave base for a fine-tune.
The spaceliner will then be taken to New Mexico’s Spaceport America, the base for Virgin Galactic’s commercial operations.
Unity remains on schedule to complete its test campaign at Spaceport America before it begins flying paying tourists this year.
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At this point, SpaceShipTwo separates and fires up its onboard rocket motor, making its own way to suborbital space.
A third SpaceShipTwo is also under construction at Mojave, which Virgin Galactic said is approximately 50 percent complete.
George Whitesides, CEO of Virgin Galactic said in yesterday’s statement: “We now have two spaceships that are structurally complete, with our third making good progress.
“These spaceships are