It was reported in a press release from the company, that the Federal Aviation Administration has approved the flight of Virgin Galactic after a small logistical issue that occurred during billionaire Richard Branson’s flight to the edge of space on July 11 caused the FAA to ground them temporarily.
SpaceShipOne had gone a little rogue from the expected path for the flight. This posed a threat to the safety of the population. Now, the corrections have been made and the flight is ready.
The company worked with the troubleshooting process with air traffic control clearance, did real-time mission comms, which means the firm can finally continue flights to space with a complete FAA license. The regulator “required Virgin Galactic to implement changes on how it communicates to the FAA during flight operations to keep the public safe,” according to an FAA statement reported in Gizmodo. It also stated that Virgin Galactic “made the required changes and can return to flight operations.”
It was written in a New Yorker piece that that pilot had overlooked the warning lights when they were rising in the VSS Unity. It stated that the plane had been outside of its designated space for two minutes. The author of the article, Nicholas Schmidle, also learned from sources that the Virgin Galactic flight’s safest alternative at this junction was to abort the mission. Still, the pilots continued the journey for another crucial minute.
After achieving this goalpost, the flight landed for a casual landing at its assigned runway, and made a successful return to Spaceport American, in New Mexico.
Had the pilots aborted the mission, Branson would have not been the first billionaire to enter space. This would have been Jeff Bezos then who reached the edge of space in his New Shepard rocket soon after. The regulatory agency later determined that Unity “deviated from its assigned airspace on its descent from space,” adding that Virgin Galactic had “failed to communicate the deviation to the FAA as required,” according to the statement reported by Gizmodo.
