SpaceShipTwo

SpaceShipTwo, also called SS2, is the crewed rocket-powered suborbital spaceplane of the Tier Two commercial launch system, intended for passenger flights operated by Virgin Galactic. It is carried aloft by the White Knight Two carrier aircraft and released for a short rocket burn, and its test program flew from Mojave in California and later from Spaceport America, with the first flight listed on 22 March 2010. The first airframe, VSS Enterprise, made 12 captive flights, 32 glide flights and 3 powered flights before the accident of 31 October 2014. On that powered flight the co-pilot unlocked the rotating tail booms, apparently by mistake, at about Mach 1; they deployed and the vehicle broke apart over Koehn Lake. Co-pilot Mike Alsbury was killed and pilot Pete Siebold parachuted to safety with serious injuries. A second vehicle, VSS Unity, reached an apogee of 83 kilometers on a test flight on 13 December 2018.