Virgin Galactic is a British commercial spaceflight company within the Virgin Group which hopes to develop commercial spacecraft and provide suborbital spaceflights to space tourists, suborbital launc
Virgin Group Ltd. is a British multinational branded venture capital conglomerate founded by entrepreneur Richard Branson and Nik Powell. Its core business areas are travel, entertainment and lifestyl
Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson is an English businessman and investor. He is best known as the founder of Virgin Group, which comprises more than 400 companies. At the age of sixteen his first b
Space tourism is space travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes. A number of startup companies have sprung up in recent years, such as Virgin Galactic and XCOR Aerospace, hoping to create
A spacecraft is a vehicle, vessel or machine designed to fly in outer space. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, earth observation, meteorology, navigation, space
The Scaled Composites Model 348 White Knight Two is a jet-powered cargo aircraft which is used to lift the SpaceShipTwo spacecraft to release altitude. It was developed by Scaled Composites from 2007
The Mojave Desert is a rain shadow, mostly high desert area, that occupies a significant portion of southeastern California and smaller parts of central California, southern Nevada, southwestern Utah
A sub-orbital space flight is a spaceflight in which the spacecraft reaches space, but its trajectory intersects the atmosphere or surface of the gravitating body from which it was launched, so that i
Scaled Composites is an American aerospace company founded by Burt Rutan and currently owned by Northrop Grumman that is located at the Mojave Spaceport, Mojave, California, United States. Prior to ac
Spaceflight is ballistic flight into or through outer space. Spaceflight can occur with spacecraft with or without humans on board. Examples of human spaceflight include the Russian Soyuz program, the
Flight testing is a branch of aeronautical engineering that develops and gathers data during flight of an aircraft, or atmospheric testing of launch vehicles and reusable spacecraft, and then analyzes
The SpaceShipOne is a suborbital air-launched spaceplane that completed the first manned private spaceflight in 2004. That same year, it won the US$10 million Ansari X Prize and was immediately retire
A spaceplane is a vehicle that operates as an aircraft in Earth's atmosphere, as well as a spacecraft when it is in space. It combines features of an aircraft and a spacecraft, which can be thought of
The National Transportation Safety Board is an independent U.S. government investigative agency responsible for civil transportation accident investigation. In this role, the NTSB investigates and rep
The Mojave Air and Space Port, also known as the Civilian Aerospace Test Center, is located in Mojave, California, at an elevation of 2,791 feet. It is the first facility to be licensed in the United
Outer space, or simply just space, is the void that exists between celestial bodies, including the Earth. It is not completely empty, but consists of a hard vacuum containing a low density of particle
Spaceport America is a spaceport located in the Jornada del Muerto desert basin in New Mexico, United States just west of the White Sands Missile Range. It lies 89 miles north of El Paso, 45 miles nor
Elbert Leander "Burt" Rutan is an American aerospace engineer noted for his originality in designing light, strong, unusual-looking, energy-efficient aircraft. He designed the record-breaking Voyager,
Private spaceflight is flight beyond the Kármán line that is conducted and paid for by an entity other than a government agency. In the early decades of the Space Age, the government space agencies of
A test pilot is an aviator who flies new and modified aircraft in specific maneuvers, known as flight test techniques or FTTs, allowing the results to be measured and the design to be evaluated. Test
A rocket is a missile, spacecraft, aircraft or other vehicle that obtains thrust from a rocket engine. Rocket engine exhaust is formed entirely from propellants carried within the rocket before use. R
Human spaceflight is space travel with a crew aboard the spacecraft. When a spacecraft is crewed, it can be operated directly, as opposed to being remotely operated or autonomous. The first human spac
The International Space Station is a space station, or a habitable artificial satellite, in low Earth orbit. It is a modular structure whose first component was launched in 1998. Now the largest artif
Mojave is a census-designated place in Kern County, California, United States. Mojave is located 50 miles east of Bakersfield, at an elevation of 2762 feet. The town is located in Antelope Valley, at
An aircraft pilot or aviator is a person who actively and directly operates the directional flight controls of an aircraft while it is in flight. While other members of a flight crew such as flight en
A rocket engine, or simply "rocket", is a jet engine that uses only stored propellant mass for forming its high speed propulsive jet. Rocket engines are reaction engines and obtain thrust in accordanc
The VSS Enterprise is the first of five commercial suborbital spacecraft being constructed for Virgin Galactic by Scaled Composites. It will also be the first ship of the Model 339 SpaceShipTwo class,
Space Exploration Technologies Corporation is a space transport services company headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by former PayPal entrepreneur and Tesla Motors CEO Elon