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New Horizons Pluto probe leader Alan Stern is going to space with Virgin Galactic - Space.com

New Horizons Pluto probe leader Alan Stern is going to space with Virgin Galactic - Space.com

New Horizons Pluto probe leader Alan Stern is going to space with Virgin Galactic - Space.com
Oct 15, 2020 1 min, 6 secs

Alan Stern, who leads NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto and beyond, has been selected to fly aboard SpaceShipTwo, Virgin Galactic's suborbital space plane. .

Related: How Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo works (infographic).

"This is the first selection of a private-sector researcher to fly with NASA funding on commercial vehicles," Stern, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado, said in a statement on Wednesday (Oct. 15), when the news was announced. .

SpaceShipTwo then fires up its rocket motor and makes its own way to suborbital space.

More than 600 customers have booked a seat aboard SpaceShipTwo, at a ticket price (most recently) of $250,000, Virgin Galactic representatives have said.

Unity has already completed two piloted demonstration flights to suborbital space and is wrapping up its test campaign at Spaceport America in New Mexico, Virgin Galactic's commercial hub.

Some of these tests will occur aboard suborbital vehicles such as SpaceShipTwo and Blue Origin's New Shepard craft, while others will ride on high-altitude balloons and airplanes that induce brief periods of microgravity via parabolic flight!

"Going to work in space myself for the first time after having spent so many years sending machines there to do the research for me is going to be a major career highlight, and something I am honored to be selected for," he said in the same statement.

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