How I flew to house, by S. Alan Stern |

The Virgin Galactic spacecraft VSS Unity soars above southern New Mexico on its technique to house. Elephant Butte Reservoir is seen beneath the rocket plume. Credit score: Virgin Galactic

In late 2023, I flew in house. However I didn’t fly as a NASA astronaut or an area vacationer. As an alternative, I flew on a coaching and analysis mission aboard a Virgin Galactic spaceplane for my firm, the more-than-3,000-person analysis and improvement nonprofit Southwest Analysis Institute (SwRI). The mission, named Galactic 5, was barely an hour lengthy, however it was jam-packed with actions for 9 separate mission aims — all of which had been efficiently achieved.

We took off and landed from Spaceport America in southern New Mexico, the place Virgin Galactic is predicated. Aboard the flight with me as passenger crew had been house vacationer Ketty Maisonrouge and house researcher Kellie Gerardi, who was funded by the Worldwide Institute for Astronautical Sciences in Boulder, Colorado. For the three of us, it was our rookie spaceflight. The mission’s Virgin Galactic flight crew, consisting of commander Mike Masucci, pilot Kelly Latimer, and teacher Colin Bennett, had been all multiple-spaceflight veterans.

The spaceflight happened by proposing to NASA to check whether or not the Virgin Galactic spacecraft — often known as SpaceShipTwo — can be appropriate for performing astronomical observations that had beforehand been performed on the house shuttle and suborbital sounding rockets. Particularly, we goal to seek out out if observations aboard SpaceShipTwo are considerably compromised by results like exhaust movies, spacecraft glints, and window micro-abrasions.

With NASA funding, I’m going to check that — maybe as early as 2026 — by taking into house a SwRI astronomical imaging system for which I used to be the principal investigator. This digicam beforehand flew on two house shuttle missions and took photos of stars, comets, planets, and the Moon via the shuttle’s home windows. I’ll take a look at the identical or related star fields, however via SpaceShipTwo’s home windows, then examine the information from each platforms.

However there are distinctive dangers concerned in having a first-time astronaut carry out such an experiment on a short, time-compressed suborbital flight: the potential for being distracted in zero gravity excessive above Earth, the stress of working shortly on a short suborbital mission, and the problem of studying to function an astronomical digicam system in a single hand whereas maneuvering between home windows in zero gravity with the opposite hand.

To scale back these dangers and put together for that mission, I flew my first spaceflight in late 2023. On that flight, I used to be capable of simulate doing the NASA astronomical experiment whereas experiencing the accelerations of launch and reentry, the view from house, and the time stress that I might be working underneath throughout my second analysis flight.

Suborbital astronomy

Astronomy, photo voltaic physics, planetary science, and lots of different analysis fields have used automated suborbital automobiles referred to as sounding rockets because the late Forties. However till the beginning of business reusable rockets like people who Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin have pioneered, people didn’t fly on suborbital analysis missions.

After all, NASA’s early Mercury astronauts and pilots of the experimental X-15 spaceplane did attain suborbital house, however they didn’t conduct important scientific analysis on these transient flights. As an alternative, the science was largely left to sounding rockets.

Such rockets have now carried out lots of of transient flights to house over the previous 70 years to carry out an array of experiments: testing sensors earlier than they flew orbitally, sampling the higher ambiance, finding out the photo voltaic system and the universe, and conducting microgravity and house biology experiments. Furthermore, sounding rockets turned a beneficial proving floor for scientists to be taught as they led small house initiatives earlier than trying bigger ones. However regardless of their immense contributions, sounding rockets are nonetheless costly. And since they’re uncrewed, they require automation, which itself will be costly — and failure-prone. 

The brand new, Twenty first-century crewed suborbital automobiles that Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic have constructed, nonetheless, are a lot cheaper to fly experiments on than sounding rockets. In addition they permit researchers to fly with and function their experiments themselves. For the primary time, house researchers can do what oceanographers, volcanologists, subject geologists, and lots of other forms of scientists have performed all alongside — go into the sphere to gather their knowledge. This game-changing facet of business suborbital spacecraft wasn’t appreciated at first as a result of the automobiles had been initially constructed for house tourism. However starting within the late 2000s, scientists like myself began to acknowledge the worth of those new automobiles for conducting most of the identical sorts of analysis that sounding rockets have performed, however with important value financial savings and different benefits.

Once I returned from serving as the pinnacle of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate to SwRI in 2009, I initiated an internally funded effort to place SwRI within the lead in exploiting business suborbital automobiles for analysis. As part of that effort, we contracted for 2 flights on Virgin Galactic and commenced getting ready experiments to fly on every of these missions. We additionally initiated a coaching program to organize myself and two different SwRI scientists, Dan Durda and Cathy Olkin, to fly aboard these automobiles as payload specialists. The preliminary coaching consisted of flights on zero-gravity plane, high-g centrifuges, and high-g flights aboard F-104 fighter jets.

Mission approval

Within the spring of 2020, NASA launched its first-ever name for proposals for researchers to fly in house with their payloads aboard business suborbital automobiles. To qualify for choice, NASA insisted that proposals should justify the necessity for the researcher to fly with the experiment. Our proposal did that by exhibiting {that a} researcher flying to house may get the identical quantity of information as three sounding rockets — and for much less cash. Within the fall of 2020, NASA chosen our proposal.

As soon as our proposal had received, we knew there can be a excessive expectation of “getting the products” (i.e., reaching success). So, we determined to make use of a SwRI-funded Virgin Galactic flight particularly to familiarize me with spaceflight and to mitigate among the obstacles to success that would have appeared on the NASA flight, had it been my rookie mission.

As we analyzed these obstacles, we recognized 9 particular aims for Flight 1, which we referred to as our “coaching and danger discount flight.” We categorized six as “minimal success standards” for Flight 1, together with studying to maneuver across the cabin in zero gravity utilizing just one hand whereas carrying a mock-up of the astronomical imager within the different hand. Two extra aims had been categorized as “full mission success standards” for Flight 1, together with having private time to look out the home windows to eradicate — or no less than cut back — the urge to take action throughout the higher-stakes NASA flight. The ninth goal — visually assessing the spaceship’s home windows for exhaust movies and scratch abrasions after the boosted ascent to house — was deemed a Flight 2 “get forward” goal that may be good to perform however not obligatory for mission success.

My mission-specific coaching for the Galactic 5 flight started about 100 days earlier than the launch. For the reason that late ’90s, I’ve flown analysis and coaching missions in high-performance plane like NASA F-18s, NASA WB-57s, and privately owned F-104s. I’ve additionally taken a number of high-g centrifuge programs, undergone altitude chamber coaching to simulate high-altitude circumstances, and had dozens of microgravity flights in plane like NASA’s well-known KC-135 “Vomit Comet.”

For the Galactic 5 mission, I took on an amped-up bodily coaching routine with further working and weightlifting. I additionally took a refresher centrifuge course on the Nationwide Aerospace Coaching and Analysis Heart in Philadelphia. There, I underwent six simulated Virgin Galactic flight profiles in a single day, a number of at g-force ranges 30 p.c larger than precise flights. I additionally undertook each day observe runs of my flight actions guidelines, which helped me refine the procedures and get the timing of every motion down. This was essential as a result of seven of my 9 flight aims needed to be achieved throughout the transient four-minute microgravity portion of the flight. All this coaching was capped off within the remaining run-up to launch by a complete, four-day-long Virgin Galactic flight college at Spaceport America that included ingress and egress coaching, flight simulator runs, moment-by-moment flight simulations, security drills, and an aerobatic plane g-force refresher flight. With my fellow Galactic 5 cabin crewmates Kellie and Ketty, I graduated from that course the day earlier than our launch to house.

Suborbital flights on Virgin Galactic start with a runway takeoff with the spaceship VSS Unity connected underneath the wings of its WhiteKnightTwo mothership, VMS Eve. This plane carries the spaceship to the stratosphere at an altitude close to 50,000 ft (15,200 meters).

After the spaceship passes its in-flight checks, the countdown to separation begins. At T-minus 0, the pilot releases the latches between the 2 ships, and the spaceship free-falls for about two seconds earlier than its engine ignites. Ignition leads to about 2 gs of acceleration initially, however in a short time ramps as much as almost 5 gs. 

As soon as the spaceship goes supersonic a couple of seconds into its flight, its commander pulls again the management follow pitch the car from horizontal to vertical for its ascent to house. The powered enhance section then continues for a few minute, burning out at a velocity over Mach 3, and with sufficient power to ascend to simply above 50 miles (80 kilometers) in altitude. When the engine cuts off, the spaceship turns into weightless for its coast to apogee (the purpose of highest altitude), after which again down till atmospheric drag forces start to decelerate the car. The complete weightless portion of the mission lasts simply 4 minutes.

The reentry that follows is one other 5-g trip, this time decelerating. To stabilize the craft’s angle throughout reentry, its twin tail booms tilt upward, rising drag and appearing like a shuttlecock. As soon as the velocity from reentry is bled off, the booms decrease, at which level the spaceship turns into a space-shuttle-like glider heading to a touchdown on the identical runway it was carried aloft from simply an hour earlier.

Go for launch

Our launch occurred shortly after dawn on Nov. 2, 2023. Preflight actions started round 2:30 a.m. I awoke, did a remaining pre-mission timeline and guidelines evaluation, and took a transport car out to the launch web site at Spaceport America, in southern New Mexico. After a light-weight breakfast there, we suited up, underwent preflight medical checks and obtained climate briefings, placed on our survival gear and parachutes (in case of an off-field touchdown), after which boarded the spaceship VSS Unity. After the pilots of each the mothership and spaceship efficiently accomplished preflight checks, we rolled down the runway and ascended uneventfully to the stratosphere, the place one other collection of checkouts started.

All of these checkouts additionally went properly and we got a “go” for spaceship launch. The Eve crew carried out a countdown after which referred to as, “Launch, launch, launch.” With a loud thud, the large, heavy latches holding Unity to its mothership launched, and we had been momentarily weightless because the spaceship dropped. I counted “one-one thousand, two-one thousand” earlier than the thrilling powered-ascent rocket trip kicked in, taking us supersonic in simply seconds, after which Unity pitched again to vertical flight and rocketed to Mach 3. Sixty seconds later, the engine lower off at an altitude close to 200,000 ft (61,000 m). At engine cutoff we had been weightless, this time for 4 minutes on a suborbital parabola carrying us as much as 55 miles (86 km) in altitude and again.

As I discussed above, the first aims for me to perform on the flight had been to observe shifting concerning the cabin in weightlessness with one hand whereas holding an astronomical digicam within the different, and to assemble knowledge on the feasibility of the exercise timeline deliberate for Flight 2. I additionally (via a pair of biomedical harnesses that I wore) recorded physiological knowledge on my blood stress and respiration fee from launch to touchdown, notably as I carried out actions throughout the in-space portion of the flight. And I used to be certainly capable of get just a little time having fun with the view in addition to do some PR, taking pictures a TV recording for SwRI.

All of those aims, in addition to 4 others, had been efficiently achieved — and with about 20 seconds to spare.

As a debriefing device, I wore a light-weight communications headset that recorded all the pieces I stated from suiting up on the bottom till after touchdown. I continuously spoke into that headset to file the flight’s occasions, classes realized, and impressions in actual time. Within the days after the flight, my Flight 2 backup, Dan Durda, and I wrote a protracted record of virtually 50 classes realized from the mission to assist in preparation for the following flight and to offer suggestions to Virgin Galactic to enhance future analysis flights. There isn’t room right here to breed that full record, however I can inform you a couple of of probably the most shocking issues I skilled.

First, the sound of the cabin in house was very, very quiet, besides for infrequent loud firings of the angle management jets. They gave the impression of somebody was sharply banging on a kettle on the spaceship’s hull in staccato vogue.

Second, every time the car pivoted in house — that’s, modified its angle — it took some aware effort on my half to stay positioned, and when it turned whereas I used to be free-floating and transiting between totally different window work stations, the place I used to be headed to would pivot round me, generally by a number of ft as I used to be en route. Every time this occurred I needed to compensate by making a second motion to get to the meant location.

Third, I discovered the sight of our planet mesmerizing and actually huge, with complete parts of North America seen out the home windows in a single look. The rising Moon over the horizon was one other wonderful sight to see. It’s additionally value noting that the g forces throughout ascent and entry had been simple to bear, as was maneuvering in zero gravity — each possible as a consequence of my coaching experiences.

The way forward for house analysis

It’s now been round two years since my rookie spaceflight, and Virgin Galactic is getting ready a brand new class of spacecraft, referred to as Delta, on which I’ll fly for the NASA astronomical analysis mission. The flight is notionally set for the autumn of 2026, however might be later, relying on Delta’s progress in development and check flights. Our astronomical digicam is able to go, and so is the biomed harness I’ll put on to provide extra physiological knowledge on the second suborbital flight. I’m actually excited to fly a second time, and may envision some extent not too far off the place quite a few researchers are flying to house — some continuously — to get their knowledge. 

It’s been an honor and a privilege to be a part of opening this new manner of doing house analysis. Sometime although, when costs drop sufficient, I’d like to fly simply as a vacationer, with the posh of much more time to see the magnificent Earth from house. And I hope you’ll get to do this, too!