Virgin Galactic’s second Rocket Powered test flight

Yesterday Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo underwent its second successful rocket-powered test flight and says it’s on track to begin tours of space in 2014. Image © MarsScientific.com and Clay Center Observatory. Have a look at the two videos from the test flight…

Virgin Galactic has successfully completed the second rocket-powered, supersonic flight of its passenger carrying reusable space vehicle, SpaceShipTwo (SS2). In addition to achieving the highest altitude and greatest speed to date, the test flight demonstrated the vehicle’s full technical mission profile in a single flight for the first time, including a high altitude deployment of the unique wing “feathering” re-entry mechanism. All of the test objectives were successfully completed.

Virgin Galactic flexes SpaceShipTwo’s unique feather mechanism in second supersonic flight.