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VSS Unity spaceship’s suborbital flight

Topics Covered: Awareness in space.

VSS Unity spaceship’s suborbital flight:

Context:

VSS Unity spaceship, with six people onboard, recently took off from New Mexico and reached an altitude of 85 km from Earth before returning. Such a trip is called a “suborbital flight”.

 

What’s suborbital?

Satellites need to reach a threshold speed in order to orbit Earth. If an object travels at a horizontal speed of about 28,000 km/hr or more, it goes into orbit once it is above the atmosphere.

  • At such speed, a satellite prevents itself from accelerating toward the Earth due to gravity.
  • Such a trip allows space travellers to experience a few minutes of “weightlessness”.

 

Significance of such experiments:

  1. Suborbital flights are helpful for microgravity research.
  2. They would be far less expensive than carrying experiments and people to the International Space Station.
  3. Suborbital flights could also be an alternative to parabolic flights in aeroplanes that space agencies currently use to simulate zero gravity.

 

About the Unity 22 mission:

As part of the mission, the crew flew to the edge of space on July 11 on board the ‘Unity’ rocket ship developed by Virgin Galactic.

This was the 22nd mission for VSS Unity.

  • This was Virgin Galactic’s fourth crewed spaceflight.
  • It was also the first to carry a full crew of two pilots and four mission specialists in the cabin, including Virgin Group Founder Richard Branson, who will be testing out the private astronaut experience.

 

Objectives of the mission:

  • Unity 22 will focus on testing the cabin and customer experience.

Currently, two additional test flights remain before the Virgin Galactic plans to commence commercial service in 2022.

 

Significance for India:

Sirisha Bandla, an astronaut born in India, was a part of the crew.

  • This is significant as she was the third woman of Indian origin to go to space after Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams.
  • Rakesh Sharma is another Indian who went into space prior to Bandla.

 

Uniqueness of VSS Unity Spaceship:

Virgin Galactic’s suborbital spacecraft are air-launched from beneath a carrier aircraft ‘White Knight Two’. The space vehicle can climb to an altitude of around 90 kilometres, enough to give passengers a few minutes of weightlessness and a view of Earth’s curvature from the edge of space.

 

Insta Curious:

  1. What altitude is considered the Edge of Space? Where is the Karman Line? Read this to understand better.
  2. Did you know that 90 percent of Earth’s gravity reaches the space station? But then, why do objects still float in orbit? Read this, 

 

InstaLinks:

Prelims Link:

  1. About the mission.
  2. Objectives.
  3. Similar missions.
  4. What is suborbital?

Mains Link:

Discuss the significance of the mission.

Sources: Indian Express.