On Tuesday, January 8th, 2019, High Fidelity announced the start of a pilot programme that will allow High Fidelity users to trade between High Fidelity Coin s(HFC) and Ehterium Either (ETH).
Etherium is an open-source, public, blockchain based distributed computing platform / operating system featuring smart contract (scripting) functionality. It incorporates a cryptocurrency – the Ether.
The latter functions in a similar manner to the Bitcoin, and its use has been boosted over the last two years by the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), an non-profit organisation of over 150 members, including national and global banks, technology companies such as Cisco and Microsoft, investment houses and research organisations, with the aim of driving the use of Ethereum blockchain technology as an open-standard across multiple market sectors.
Initially, High Fidelity will be allowing users to purchase HFC using ETH. However, over time, all High Fidelity users will be able to buy and sell their HFC for ETH, although an ETH wallet will be required.
Trades of HFC will be handled in fixed amounts of $25 or $50 (HFC 2,500 or 5,000), and will be handled via an in-world banker, through a process similar to that currently used to convert HFCs to USD. As the programme with ETH develops, High Fidelity plan to start offering an automated means of selling HFCs for ETH, and may eventually see the ability to sell HFCs directly for USD values discontinued.
An important point to note with trades is that HFC is a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar (100 HFC = US $1.00), while Ethereum varies against the Dollar. Thus, the exchange rate between HFC and ETH will fluctuate.
This is a further interesting move by High Fidelity, which High Fidelity see as being key to the future of buying / selling HFC:
Over time, we see this being our primary method for purchasing and selling HFC. It’s convenient, global, well-governed and broadly adopted. In future, we may enable trades to other cryptocurrencies or tokens, either directly or through third-party exchanges. We also hope that HFC will be used by other VR platforms or applications, making the transfer to Ethereum even more useful.
An artist’s impression of how the surface of Ultima Thule might look, based on the images and data returned by New Horizons thus far. Credit: NASA
We set a record. Never before has a spacecraft explored anything so far away. Think of it. We’re a billion miles farther than Pluto [and] Just like with Pluto, we could not be happier. What you’re seeing is the first contact binary ever explored by spacecraft: two completely separate objects that are now joined together.
– Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator
The astronomical year got off to a flying start on January 1st, 2019 when NASA’ New Horizons vehicle – the same craft that flew by Pluto and Charon and their attendant moons in 2015 – shot past (486958)2014 MU69, a trans-Neptunian Object (TNO) residing in the Kuiper belt. A relatively tiny object, and dubbed Ultima Thule, it wasn’t even known about when the New Horizons mission launched in January 2006.
As I noted in my previous Space Sunday report, Kuiper Belt objects are of particular interest to planetary astronomers and scientists as they represent the oldest near-pristine material in the solar system, and so could contain many secrets, from how rocky planets formed through to the origins of life. Ultima Thule itself has been of particular interest because data gathered from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) suggested it might be a binary object due to its apparent brightness fluctuating, suggesting two bodies orbiting one another. However, as New Horizons slipped into the final days leading up to the fly-by, it seemed to report no variance’s in the light reflected by the object.
The space craft reached its point of closest approach to Ultima Thule at 05:33 UT on the morning of January 1st, 2019. However, the nature of the approach, coupled with the huge distance between Earth and the vehicle meant that the first images and data wouldn’t be received for several hours after the probe has passed the object (it takes over 6 hours for radio signals to reach Earth from the vehicle), so at the time of closest approach, scientists and the public had to make do with the images received in the 24 hours preceding it.
Left: a composite image of Ultima Thule taken by New Horizons on December 31st. 2018, at a distance of approx. 1.2 million km revealing the object to most likely be a “contact binary”. Right: a sketch showing the estimated rotation axis of the object relative to New Horizons, helping to explain when no variances in brightness were recorded ahead of the encounter. Credit: NASA / JHU APL / SwRI; James Tuttle Keane
These images, captured while New Horizons was still more than 1 million kilometres (635,000 mi) from Ultima Thule, were enough to confirm that, rather than being either a single elongated object (as suggested by the lack of variance in brightness the probe was recording) or two objects orbiting one another, Ultima Thule is in fact a “contact binary” – objects conjoined after gently colliding with one another, to form a shape initially referred to as a “bowling pin” (this latter changed to “dirty snowman” as clearer images were received). They also revealed why New Horizons wasn’t seeing any brightness variations: whereas Hubble was seeing Ultima Thule from more of an “end on” angle (like a bottle tumbling through the air towards you), New Horizons was approach it more-or-less along its axis of rotation (like standing in front of a slowly turning propeller), so it was always reflecting the same amount of light.
The initial images led members of the New Horizons mission team to call Ultima Thule the “first ever” contact binary object to be explored. However, this might be disputed; the nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, as seen by ESA’s Rosetta mission, as has two lobes connected by a narrow “neck” region which could mark it as a contact binary.
This first colour photo of Ultima Thule reveals its red colour as seen by New Horizons spacecraft from a distance of 137,000 km (85,000 mi), captured on January 1st, 2019, shortly ahead of the point of closest approach. From left to right: an enhanced colour image, a higher-resolution black and white image, and a composite combining both into a more detailed view. Credit: NASA / JHU APL / SwRI
Nevertheless, there is still something magical about the way the two lobes came together – as a member of the New Horizons team put it, the bump of them joining would have been so gentle, had it been caused by a car bumping your own, it wouldn’t result in any real damage. The lobes themselves are of unequal size; at 19 km (12 mi) across, the larger has been dubbed “Ultima”, while the smaller lobe has been dubbed “Thule”, and is 14 km (9 mi) across. Combined, these give the object an overall length of some 33 km (21 mi). That they came together so gently has already been seen as a confirmation of the pebble accretion theory of planetary formation.
The exterior of both lobes is probably a mix of water, methane and nitrogen ices, doubtless mixed with other elements / minerals, and the reddish hue revealed in the colour images thus far returned is likely the result of the irradiation of ices on its surface – a process witnessed on Pluto. However, it will not until photographs taken much closer to the object – notably those at closest approach, a mere 3,500 km (2,200 mi) – are received in mid-February, that we’ll have a clear view of the object’s topography.
Following the fly-by, the images received by mission control were taken at distances between 137,000 km (85,000 mi) and 28,000 km (18,000 mi) from the object, and part of the initial data transfer. In all, some 7 Gb of data was gathered, but due to the complexities involved, it will take 20 months for all of it to be received on Earth. In fact, at the time this article was written, and due to the passage of the Sun between the spacecraft and Earth, data transfer has been suspended for five days (January 5th through 10th, 2019) to prevent data loss due to solar interference. Even so, the images that have been received have been enough to not only reveal some of Ultima Thule’s secrets, but to also create new mysteries about it.
Alan Stern, the principal investigator for New Horizons, high-fives Alice Bowman, the mission operations manager at JHU APL, after controllers received a transmission from the spacecraft confirming a successful fly-by of Ultima Thule on January 1st, 2019. Credit: NASA / Bill Ingalls
One of these mysteries is that computer modelling suggests that given the way the two lobes came together, Ultima Thule should have a rate of spin to complete one revolution every 3 or 4 hours. However, data from New Horizons indicates it is spinning far slower: one revolution every 15 hours. So something must have slowed it down – the question is, what?
The most obvious explanation would be the gravitational influence of nearby objects – say two or three small moons orbiting Ultima Thule. However, due to the risk of collision, the space around Ultima Thule was surveyed well ahead of the fly-by, and astronomers are convinced there is nothing orbiting it either beyond 800 km (500 mi) or closer than 160 km (100 mi) – although that does leave a fairly large sphere of space between the two which may yet reveal one or more objects. More will be known on this in late January, when data on New Horizons’ own studies of the space around Ultima Thule should be received by mission control.
An artist’s impression of New Horizons passing Ultima Thule on January 1st, 2019. Credit: Adrian Mann/All About Space
On July 14th, 2015, NASA’s New Horizons vehicle, the front-end of the mission of the same name, made its closest flyby of Pluto and Charon (see Perfectly Pluto for more). Before, during and after the point of closest approach, the vehicle gathered huge amounts of data about Pluto, Charon and their attendant moonlets. Much of the data is still being studied, but in the years since the encounter, New Horizons has revolutionised our thinking about dwarf planets.
Since that time, the space vehicle has been travelling on out into the solar system at a speed of around 49,600 km/h (31,000 mph), and almost as soon as the Pluto flyby had been completed, with New Horizons still having plenty of power thanks to its nuclear batteries, astronomers started looking along its route for a possible follow-up target for examination.
After due consideration of options, a suitable target was selected. officially designated (486958)2014 MU69, the object is a trans-Neptunian body located in the Kuiper belt. Of an elongated, shape, it is estimated to be around 30 km (18.75 mi), and might be a binary system of objects orbiting one another, although this is currently in doubt.
Discovered by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope in June 2014, just over a year before New Horizons reached Pluto, the object was unofficially dubbed “Ultima Thule” (Thule, in Greek and Roman literature, being the farthest north you could go, and “Ultima” being used to indicate “beyond”). It was selected because of its relative proximity to the probe’s projected course out through the Kuiper belt, allowing it to be reached with minimal course corrections using the probe’s orientation thrusters.
The New Horizons journey. Credit: JHU/APL
The Kuiper belt is a massive ring of stellar objects surrounding the solar system between 30 and 55 AU distance (1 AU – astronomical unit – being the average distance between the Sun and Earth). It is often regarded as the “outer edge” of our solar system, but the truth is, the solar system extends much, much further. Pluto and Charon are themselves Trans-Neptunian objects within the Kuiper belt.
The region – which might be described more as a doughnut than a belt – contains tens of thousands of objects (with more being discovered on almost a weekly basis). However, such is the volume of space they occupy, most are separated from one another by at least the distance separating Earth from the Sun. They are of great interest to astronomers, as they represent pristine material dating back to the very birth of the solar system, so studying them could tell us a lot more about the place in which we live.
The [Kuiper] belt is analogous to the solar system’s attic. It’s an ancient region, very far from the sun, which has been preserved in a deep freeze. It’s the equivalent of an archaeological dig into the history and formation of the planets. So, scientifically it’s a gold mine, and by going there with a spacecraft and observing KBOs up close, like we’ll be doing with Ultima, we hope to learn a lot about how the early formation stages of the planets took place.
– Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator
However, New Horizons won’t have long to study Ultima Thule in detail. If all goes well, the vehicle will blaze past the object on New Year’s Day 2019, at 05:33 GMT), travelling far too fast to slow down. At its closest approach, the probe will be some 3,540 km (2,200 mi) from Ultima Thule, which will appear about as large to it as the full Moon does to observers on Earth. As currently takes 6 hours and 8 minutes for a signal to reach Earth from New Horizons, it means that – as with its Pluto encounter – the probe will be working on an automated basis and pre-programmed commands throughout the encounter.
Simulation of anticipated images the LORRI camera aboard New Horizons vehicle will capture during the close approach to Ultima Thule
Even so, astronomers around the world are eagerly awaiting the encounter, as very little in known about Ultima Thule, and what New Horizions has apparently discovered as it approaches this tiny rock – it is too small to even classify as a dwarf planet – has already piqued interest.
What we know of the trans-Neptunian region is that it’s the leftover remnants of the objects that didn’t make it into being planets. These little rocky and icy worlds were formed in the initial disc of material around the sun, the ones that never grew up into being planets in their own right. Since then, they’ve been sculpted by changes in the orbital positions of the giant planets, particularly Neptune. What we see there today are materials from that initial disc. Some of them are familiar, like water ice and rock, but some of them are unfamiliar, like kitchen cleaning chemicals you have under your sink, in solid form
– Michele Bannister, Outer Solar System Origins Survey, Queen’s University, Belfast
As noted earlier, it had been believed, from data gathered by Hubble, that Ultima Thule was an elongated, possibly binary, object. However, on December 20th, 2018, the New Horizons team reported that the light measured from 2014 MU69 is constant, as would be expected from a spherical body. This disparity between Hubble’s finding and those of New Horizons have yet to be explained.
One issue with the flyby has been the partial US Government shut-down that started on December 22nd, 2018, and which has impacted some of NASA’s public outreach feeds. To compensate, the Applied Physics Laboratory, responsible for designing and building New Horizons, and part of John Hopkins University, has taken over mission briefings and will provide live updates via the JHUAPL YouTube page for flyby events on Monday, December 31st 2018, and Tuesday January 1st, 2019. You can see a full schedule here.
I haven’t written too much about “consumer” virtual reality and / or augmented reality during 2018, primarily because this past year has been rather quiescent when compared to 2017 and earlier, so outside of one or two events, there hasn’t been that much I’ve been prompted to write about. As such, and as we pass from 2018 to 2019, it seems a good time to take a broad look at both and where they might be going, at least from a purely armchair perspective.
In doing so, I’m not attempting to set myself up as any kind of “expert” or offer predictions per se; I’ve simply been gorging myself on a wide range of articles and reports on AR, VR and mixed reality over the last few weeks to catch up on everything, and with this article I’ll focus on virtual reality.
(Note that in writing this article, I’m deliberately ignoring two products that involve VR: Microsoft Mixed Reality and Apple’s rumoured AR / VR system. The former, because Microsoft appears to be playing a much longer game, and it is unclear how MMR will impact markets down the road; the latter because it’s unclear how Apple’s product will mix AR and VR, it’s overall capabilities, price point or precise nature.)
Consumer focused virtual reality has always had a hard mountain to climb. From the start, predictions of its growth verged on the ridiculous. At the end of 2015, for example, TrendForce claimed sales of VR hardware, software and services would hit US $70 billion by 2020, a figure that, at the time tended to be taken for granted despite the fact that when it was made, the consumer versions of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive hadn’t even started shipping. Nor were TrendForce alone in the hyping.
Consumer-focused VR was drastically over-hyped before the first consumer version of the Oculus Rift had even launched – something which had perhaps come back to haunt it. via TrendForce
Obviously, VR hasn’t achieved anything like this kind of volume, but it is growing. In 2017, for example, total VR hardware and software sales reached US $2.8 billion, three years ahead of the time frame IHS Markit (one of the more reserved analytics companies looking at VR in late 2015) predicted. In 2018, this increased to US $3.3 billion; a relatively modest growth, but not unexpected given that outside of the Oculus Go, there haven’t been any major releases of VR headsets. This modest growth in sales, coupled with the lack of exciting new hardware releases has perhaps lead to more negativity around VR being voiced than previous years. However, 2019 could be the start of a “turnaround” for VR.
VR’s current and projected growth. Source: SuperData
As it is, SuperData, which specialises in analysing the computer and gaming sectors, predicts that the VR market will double total revenues to US $9.6 billion in 2019. They further suggest revenues could grow to US $19.0 billion by the end of 2021. These might again sound like inflated figures – particularly the idea of a five-fold revenue increase in just three years, but there are actually two or three reasons to suggest why 2019 could well see significant growth in revenue for VR, and which will see it continue to trend upwards at a rate somewhat faster than seen thus far.
Up until the arrival of the Oculus Go earlier in 2018, consumer VR hardware had been more-or-less split into three areas: high-end tethered systems requiring upmarket PCs to power them; units dependent on the use of smartphones for a more limited immersive experience, and what might be termed a purely games oriented solution in the Sony Playstation VR. As such, all have been somewhat limited in their appeal / reach.
Oculus Go: 2560×1440 @ 72Hz screen; 101-degrees field-of-view; 3 DoF tracking; Snapdragon 821; price and on-board storage: US $199 / 32 GB and US $249 / 64 GB
However, in 2018 the Oculus Go arrived, and in 2019 it is set to be joined by the Oculus Quest and the Vive Focus. The significance of these three units is that they are entirely self-contained and provide an immediate VR experience right out-of-the-box. No need to hook up a heavyweight PC (possibly at added expense) for the heavy-lifting, or to have a suitable smartphone to provide the visuals.
While both the Quest (shipping in 2019) and the Focus (currently only available in China) have yet to become globally available, their potential impact might be seen in the positive response the Go generated at launch, as noted by SuperData:
Oculus Go is part of an important movement. Facebook sold more units of the standalone headset in its launch quarter than they did the Oculus Rift in the entire first half of 2017. Its price and convenience are proving to be selling points.
– Stephanie Llamas, SuperData Head of XR data research
What is particularly interesting about the response is that it has not been limited to purely “home” use. While the Go is marketed as an “entertainment” headset, it has already been seen as a means of expanding VR’s use within enterprise markets. Take Walmart as an example.
The first image taken by humans of the whole Earth, captured by Bill Anders. It shows the Earth at a distance of 30,000 km (18,750 mi). South is at the top, with South America visible at the covering the top half centre, with Africa entering into shadow. Credit: NASA / Bill Anders (as08-16-2593hr)
2019 marks the 50th anniversary of human beings setting foot on the surface of our Moon. The Apollo programme may have first and foremost been driven out of political need / desires, but it nevertheless stands as a remarkable achievement, given it came n the same decade when a human being first flew in space, and a little under 12 years since the very first satellite orbited the Earth.
To this day, Apollo stands as one of the most remarkable space programmes ever witnessed in terms of scale, cost, and return. It propelled a generation of American school children to pursue careers in engineering, flight, the sciences and more. In all, the Apollo lunar programme flew a total of 11 crews in space between 1967 and 1972, nine of them to the Moon, with two crewed missions to Earth orbit.
After the tragedy of the Apollo 1 fire in January 1967, which claimed the lives of Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Edward White II and Roger B. Chaffee, NASA worked hard to redesign the Apollo Command Module, providing far greater insulation against the risk of fire, as well as altering the vehicle’s atmosphere (from 100% oxygen to a 60/40 oxygen / nitrogen mix) and altering the main hatch so that the crew could escape in the event of a launch pad emergency. In October 1968, the redesigned vehicle, along with its supporting Service Module (together referred to as the Command and Service Module, or CSM) was tested in Earth orbit for the first time by the crew of Apollo 7.
The crew of Apollo 8: (l) James A Lovell Jr, Command Module Pilot; (c) William A. Anders (Lunar Module pilot, although no actual lunar Module was flown); (r) Frank Borman, Mission Commander. This official photograph was taken on November 22nd, 1968, a month before they would orbit the Moon. Credit: NASA
Scheduled for launch towards the end of 1968, Apollo 8 had originally been planned as the first orbital flight test of the CSM and Lunar Module (LM). However, two events encouraged NASA to revisit their plans. Due to continued delays in the delivery of a flight-ready LM, the agency decided to swap the Apollo 8 and Apollo 9 missions and crews around; Apollo 9 would flight-test CSM and LM, once available. Meanwhile, Apollo 8, carrying Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders, and marking the first crewed flight of the mighty Saturn V rocket, would be used in an orbital flight designed to simulate the atmospheric re-entry at the speeds a Command Module would face on a return from the Moon without actually sending the crew to the Moon.
Then, in August and September 1969 photographs captured by US spy satellites suggested the Soviet Union had one of its massive N1 rocket, easily the equal of Saturn V, sitting on a launch pad. With fears that the Soviet Union was perhaps approaching the point where it could launch a crewed mission to the Moon, Apollo 8 was further revised and Borman, Lovell and Anders were informed they’d be spending Christmas 1968 where no other person had spent Christmas before: in orbit around the Moon, allowing them to fully check-out the CSM as it would be flown in an actual lunar landing mission.
Apollo 8 on the launch pad the night before launch. Credit NASA
So it was that on Saturday, December 21st, 1968, Borman, Lovell and Anders were strapped into their seats atop the 110.6 metre (363 ft) tall Saturn V, about to undertake the longest journey ever undertaken by humans up until that point in time. At 07:51 local time (12:51 UTC) the five massive F-5 engines of the rocket’s first stage thundered into life, slowly lifting the 2,812 tonne (US 3,100 short tons) vehicle into the sky.
On reaching orbit, the CSM still attached to the Saturn V’s third stage, spent some 2 hours and 30 minutes in orbit while the crew performed a final check of their systems. Then the S-IVB motor was re-started, and in five minutes accelerated the vehicle from 7,600 to 10,800 metres per second (25,000 to 35,000 ft/s), pushing it away from Earth and on course for the Moon. With TLI – Trans-Lunar Injection successfully completed, the crew separated the CSM and rotated it to photograph the expended third stage, still following behind.
The Apollo 8 S-IVB third stage, imaged from the Command module, shortly after separation. The object at the forward end of the rocket stage is a Lunar Module Test Article, a dummy payload carried in place of an actual Lunar Module. Credit: NASA (from official image AS8-16-2583)
After a mid-course correction, and around 55 hours and 40 minutes after launch, the crew of Apollo 8 became the first humans to enter the gravitational sphere of influence of another celestial body as the effect of the Moon’s gravitational force on the vehicle had become stronger than that of the Earth. Nine hours later, the crew performed the second of two mid-course corrections using the CSM’s reaction control system, bringing them to within 115.4 km (71.7 m) of the lunar surface and oriented ready for a burn of the Service Module’s main motor to slow them into lunar orbit.
InSight’s first full selfie on Mars, captured on December 6th, 2018 (Sol 10) and released on December 11th. It displays the lander’s solar panels and deck. On top of the deck are its science instruments, weather sensor booms and UHF antenna. Credit: NASA/JPL.
It’s been a further busy week for NASA’s InSight Lander as it starts to get down to business. In particular, the rover has been further exercising its robot arm and preparing for the start of operations – work that has involved surveying its local surroundings.
The week started with NASA releasing InSight’s first “selfie”, a mosaic of 11 images captured by the Instrument Deployment Camera (IDC), located on the elbow of the lander’s robotic arm. Clearly visible in the completed image is the copper-coloured seismometer that will be placed on the surface of Mars to listen to the planet’s interior with its silver protective dome just behind it. Also visible is the black boom of the robot arm rising mast-like.
The IDC is one of two camera systems on InSight, but the only one that is fully mobile. It will be used in conjunction with the Instrument Context Camera (ICC), fixed to the lander’s hull, to correctly place the surface instruments of the SEIS seismometer and the HP3 drilling mechanism on Mars.
The static nature of the ICC means that placement of the surface instruments is limited to an arc directly in front of the lander, and as well as taking selfies, InSight has been using the IDC to survey this area from above.
A mosaic 52 individual images captured by the IDC of the ground directly in front of the lander. It shows the area where the spacecraft will eventually set its science instruments, with the lavender line marking the preferred area for placing SEIS and HP3. Credit: NASA/JPL
Deployment of these two instruments will take time. While operations will start in the coming week, they will likely take around two months to complete. The SEIS will be deployed first. This will be a complex task, placing the unit on the surface first, followed by its protective cover, designed to prevent the Martian wind and atmospheric changes affecting the readings the seismometer takes of the planet’s interior.
If all goes according to plan, the HP3 will be deployed in around mid-January. It will commence operations as soon as possible after deployment. However, it will be an extended process before the instrument starts to deliver on its science goals. This is because the self-hammering heat probe within HP3 – nicknamed the mole – has to “drill” its way some 5 metres (16ft) below the Martian surface. However, it will take time because the probe must pause periodically to release a burst of heat that will help it determine the nature of the material around it and possible hazards below it.
They were speaking about the seven minutes of terror on landing, now I’m saying we have two months of terror in front of us when we penetrate into the surface. The drilling mechanism relies on pushing aside dirt. Smaller rocks it can either push aside or burrow around, but a large rock – 1 metre [3ft] in diameter or so – would stymie the probe’s drilling mechanism.
– Tilman Spohn, of the German space agency DLR, and HP3’s principal investigator
In particular, the effectiveness of HP3 depends on how deeply it penetrates the regolith.
Three images captured by the HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, released on December 13th, 2018. Left: the lander’s aeroshell and parachute. Right: the heat shield, discarded after EDL and ahead of parachute deployment on November 26th, 2018. Centre: InSight itself with a surrounding ring of regolith blasted by the lander’s landing motors. The teal colour is not genuine, but the result of sunlight being reflected off of the lander and its parts saturating the HiRSE imaging system. Credit: NASA/JPL
The less we penetrate, the worse it will be. If it’s just 1 m (3 ft) or so deep, the team will need to rely on more intensive modelling. But if it reaches 3 m (10 ft), which should occur around mid February, the team will be pleased — and if it can reach the full depth of 5 m (16 ft) around March 10th or so, all the better.
– Tilman Spohn
The survey of the landing site has helped confirmed that despite early misgivings when InSight first touched-down, the area occupied by the lander is about as free from rocks and possible surface hazards for SEIS and HP3 as might have been possible to find.
Virgin Galactic Reaches Space with VSS Unity
On December 13th, 2018, Virgin Galactic carried out a supersonic flight test that carried VSS Unity into space for the first time – at least according the NASA’s and the US Air Force’s reckoning. The success of the flight takes Virgin Galactic closer to taking paying customers on the six-passenger rocketplane, which is about the size of an executive jet, on sub-orbital flights into space.
Virgin Galactic’s WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft VMS Eve, with VSS Unity slung beneath it, takes to the air from the Mojave Air and Space Port in the early hours of the morning, local time, on December 13th, 2018. Credit: Virgin Galactic
Unity, also referred to as SpaceShipTwo, was carried aloft by its mothership, WhiteKnightTwo from the Mojave Space Port to an altitude of 13,100 metres (43,000 feet). It was then dropped from the carrier jet, allowing the crew of two, Mark “Forger” Stucky and former NASA astronaut Rick “CJ” Sturckow, to ignite the single rocket motor. Burning for 60 seconds, the motor allowed Unity to start a rapid climb and achieved Mach 2.9, nearly three times the speed of sound.
After engine cut-out, the vehicle continued to climb for a further minute, reaching an altitude of 82 km (51 miles) – enough to put it across the line NASA and the US air Force consider to be the edge of space relative to Earth (80 km / 50 mi above sea level).
A dramatic shot of Unity, having been released by Eve, igniting its rocket motor at the start of a climb from 13 km to 82 km in just 2 minutes.
Once Unity reached apogee, the two pilots were afforded some brief moments of microgravity. They then “feathered” the tail booms, causing the vehicle to gently fall back into the denser atmosphere like a shuttlecock. Once air density was sufficient, the tail sections returned to their “regular” position, allowing the vehicle to achieve unpowered aerodynamic flight, landing back at Mojave Air and Space Port at 08:14 local time (16.14 UTC), with the flight from the drop to the landing lasting 14 minutes in total.
While NASA and the US Air Force view the edge of space being at 80 km, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), the international standard-setting and record-keeping body for aeronautics and astronautics, officially place the boundary between atmosphere and space – called the Kármán line – at 100 km (62 mi; 330,000 ft). Nevertheless, the flight is enough for Stucky to gain his astronaut wings, and for Virgin Galactic to talk in terms of commencing passenger-carrying operations in the near future.
The view from the cockpit at 82 km above the Earth. Credit: Virgin Galactic
