Three Italians are set to be the first
from their country, and the first Europeans, to go sub-orbital
on a Virgin Galactic flight at the end of this month, it was
announced Thursday.
Air force Colonel Walter Villadei, lieutenant colonel Angelo
Landolfi, and National Research Council (CNR) engineer
Pantaleone Carlucci will carry out scientific experiments on
board the Spaceship-2 space plane.
The mission was presented Thursday by the air force and the CNR.
It will be called Virtute-1, an Italian acronym for Italian
Flight For Suborbital Research and Technology.
Virtute is the Latin for 'virtue'.
Virgin Galactic (VG) is an American spaceflight company founded
by Richard Branson and his British Virgin Group retains an 18%
stake through Virgin Investments Limited.
It is headquartered in California, USA, and operates from New
Mexico.
The company is developing commercial spacecraft and aims to
provide suborbital spaceflights to space tourists.
Virgin Galactic's suborbital spacecraft are air launched from
beneath a carrier airplane known as White Knight Two. Virgin
Galactic's maiden spaceflight occurred in 2018 with its VSS
Unity spaceship.
On 11 July 2021 company founder Richard Branson and three other
employees rode on a flight as passengers, marking the first time
a spaceflight company founder has travelled on his own ship into
outer space (according to the NASA definition of outer space
beginning at 50 miles above the Earth).
Regular paid passenger service flights are scheduled to begin in
2022 after two more test flights have been completed.
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