Thread: our CEO, Michael Colglazier, on today’s flight test. Today’s flight landed beautifully, with pilots, planes, and spaceship safe, secure, and in excellent shape — the foundation of every successful mission! Our flight today did not reach space as we had been planning.
After being released from its mothership, SpaceShipTwo Unity’s onboard computer that monitors the rocket motor lost connection. As designed, this triggered a fail-safe scenario that intentionally halted ignition of the rocket motor.
Following this occurrence, our pilots flew back to Spaceport America and landed gracefully as usual.
When I became CEO, I was briefed on the safety engineering of our Spaceflight System, which is purposely designed to enable our pilots to safely glide back at any point.
Seeing firsthand how our pilots brought Unity in for a picture-perfect landing after an off-nominal condition confirmed this approach. I am even more confident that this is the level of safety that consumers will want and will be expecting from us.
As we do with every test flight, we are evaluating all the data, including the root cause assessment of the computer communication loss. We look forward to sharing information on our next flight window in the near future.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Virgin Galactic

Virgin Galactic Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @virgingalactic

12 Dec
SpaceShipTwo Unity and the crew are on target to attempt our first rocket-powered flight from Spaceport America, New Mexico today. The weather looks good and we’re targeting an 08:00amMT take-off. Stay tuned for live updates.
We will be providing live updates on today's flight via Twitter. This flight will not be live streamed - we’re saving that moment for a special flight in the future. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see the footage after flight. virg.in/TjE
All press will be sent media assets shortly after the flight, including images and b-roll footage from the flight. You will be able to download them, here virg.in/Gp7
Read 4 tweets
8 Apr
In response to Covid-19 we formed a task force with @NASAArmstrong, @Antelopevalleyc, @CityofLancaster and @TheSpaceshipCo. Our aim is to help manage the patient surge and demands on breathing assistance mechanisms in our community. Here’s what’s happened virg.in/TjR
Designed and built several prototype patient oxygen hoods, which allow oxygen-rich pressure to support those admitted with COVID-19 - opening up the alveoli in the lungs, and helping to delay or prevent Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) from developing.
Designed and built two designs for protective enclosures to reduce risk for health workers during intubation procedures, as well as a design for an antechamber for those workers to don and doff protective clothing.
Read 8 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!