Weeks ahead of its next mission, commercial spaceline company Virgin Galactic is pushing back against a new report in the New Yorker that its July 11 flight to space with founder Richard Branson on board went off-course, triggering an investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration.
In a new development Thursday, the FAA indicated that the space plane VSS Unity will remain grounded until its investigation is complete or the agency determines that the issue does not present a public hazard.
The New Yorker reported, based on interviews with unnamed Virgin Galactic officials, that during the Unity’s July flight pilots Dave Mackay and Mike Masucci were alerted to the plane’s deviation from its planned trajectory.
According to those interviews, a yellow caution light indicated less than one minute into the flight that the nose of the plane was “insufficiently vertical” and its flight path shallow.
This was purportedly followed by a red light indicating an “entry glide cone warning,” referring to its angle of descent, alerting pilots that the Unity was not within the airspace cleared by the FAA, and might have to make an emergency landing absent immediate corrective action or aborting the mission.
Masucci was quoted by the New Yorker as having said in a 2015 pilots’ meeting that the red glide cone warning “should scare the crap out of you.”
The VSS Unity is first carried to an altitude of 50,000 feet by the aircraft VMS Eve and then released. The spacecraft then engages its rocket motor and accelerates rapidly to a speed of Mach 3 as it angles upward toward space.
After passengers and crew experience weightlessness and a view of the Earth’s curvature, the plane drops back down and conducts a glide landing onto the Spaceport America runway in southern New Mexico.
The July 11 mission was highly publicized as the company’s first flight by the company’s founder, Richard Branson, and other passengers on board. The company provided its own exclusive coverage of the flight while news organizations were restricted to a gated area away from public officials and other guests witnessing the flight and other festivities.
The anchors covering the flight in real time made no mention of the course deviation.
Virgin Galactic FAA investigation could delay next mission
On Thursday, the agency confirmed in a statement that the Unity, also known as SpaceShipTwo, “deviated from its Air Traffic Control clearance as it returned to Spaceport America,” its base of flight operations.
The agency said it was overseeing Virgin Galactic’s investigation of the July 11 “mishap.”
Moreover, the FAA stated:
“Virgin Galactic may not return the SpaceShipTwo vehicle to flight until the FAA approves the final mishap investigation report or determines the issues related to the mishap do not affect public safety.”
“Depending on circumstances, some mishap investigations might conclude in a matter of weeks,” an FAA spokesperson told the Las Cruces Sun-News. “Other more complex investigations might take several months. The FAA will not speculate on how long it will take to complete this particular mishap investigation.”
That could intrude on the timeline for Virgin Galactic’s next mission. The company has previously announced plans to fly members of the Italian Air Force, who are training to be astronauts, in late September or early October.
In a statement, Virgin Galactic acknowledged the change in trajectory, saying the spacecraft flew outside its protected airspace for 1 minute and 41 seconds but maintained that the plane’s passengers and crew were never in danger and that “at no time did the ship travel above any population centers or cause a hazard to the public.”
A spokesperson for the company said that, while the flight trajectory deviated from the flight plan, “it was a controlled and intentional flight path.”
“We take this seriously and are currently addressing the causes of the issue and determining how to prevent this from occurring on future missions,” they said.
The company disputes what it called “misleading characterizations and conclusions” in the New Yorker story, reiterating its commitment to flight safety and protocols and maintaining that the July 11 mission “was a safe and successful test flight that adhered to our flight procedures and training protocols.”
Their response continued:
“When the vehicle encountered high altitude winds which changed the trajectory, the pilots and systems monitored the trajectory to ensure it remained within mission parameters. Our pilots responded appropriately to these changing flight conditions exactly as they have been trained and in strict accordance with our established procedures. Although the flight’s ultimate trajectory deviated from our initial plan, it was a controlled and intentional flight path that allowed Unity 22 to successfully reach space and land safely at our Spaceport in New Mexico.”
The company has yet to respond as to whether it will reschedule the next mission, Unity 23, in light of the investigation.
It would be a further delay for the start of commercial service after Virgin’s previous announcement that, after the next flight, it would ground the mothership Eve for a few months to implement upgrades.
That sets the beginning of regular commercial service, currently priced at $450,000 per ticket, to the summer of 2022.
Meanwhile, the company fiercely rejected questions raised by the New Yorker article about pressure to fulfill the mission on July 11, when Richard Branson hoped to beat his aerospace rival Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin, into space.
“The safety of our crew and passengers is Virgin Galactic’s top priority,” the company stated. “Our entire approach to spaceflight is guided by a fundamental commitment to safety at every level, including our spaceflight system, our test flight program and our rigorous pilot training protocol.”
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