Virgin Galactic Unity 21 was a

sub-orbital spaceflight A sub-orbital spaceflight is a spaceflight in which the spacecraft reaches outer space, but its trajectory intersects the surface of the primary (astronomy), gravitating body from which it was launched. Hence, it will not complete one orbital ...

of the SpaceShipTwo-class VSS ''Unity'' which took place on 22 May 2021, piloted by David Mackay and co-piloted by Frederick Sturckow. It was the first human spaceflight from the state of

New Mexico New Mexico is a state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States. It is one of the Mountain States of the southern Rocky Mountains, sharing the Four Corners region with Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. It also ...

. It was operated by

Virgin Galactic Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. is a British-American spaceflight company founded by Richard Branson and the Virgin Group conglomerate, which retains an 11.9% stake through Virgin Investments Limited. It is headquartered in California, and opera ...

, a private company led by Richard Branson which intends to conduct

space tourism Space tourism is human space travel for recreational purposes. There are several different types of space tourism, including orbital, suborbital and lunar space tourism. Tourists are motivated by the possibility of viewing Earth from space, ...

flights in the future. Unity 21 was the first human spaceflight to be launched from Spaceport America. Reaching an apogee of , the flight satisfied the United States definition of spaceflight (), but fell short of the Kármán line (), the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale definition.

Crew

Flights are currently only by U.S Convention.

Flight

On 22 May 2021, ''Unity's'' mother ship VMS ''Eve'' carried it into flight in a parasite configuration. At 15:26 UTC, ''Unity'' was drop launched. Pilots MacKay and Sturckow flew ''Unity'' at a maximum speed of Mach 3 to a maximum altitude of over . This altitude surpassed the 50-mile limit used in the United States to denote the limit of space, but fell short of the Kármán line. Both craft landed safely afterwards.

References

{{Virgin Galactic 2021 in spaceflight SpaceShipTwo Test spaceflights Private space missions Aviation history of the United States Suborbital human spaceflights 2021 in New Mexico 2021 in aviation May 2021 in the United States