'Just unbelievable': Virgin Galactic finishes off year of commercial spaceflights with much success -- and excitement

Nov. 2—SPACEPORT AMERICA — Kellie Gerardi, a payload specialist and bioastronautics researcher with the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences, exited the VSS Unity on Thursday morning after a successful Virgin Galactic spaceflight. She greeted friends and family members, her eyes filled with tears.

"This was the best day of my life," Gerardi exclaimed shortly after her first flight to space. "Just unbelievable."

She blasted off into space on Thursday with two others — Alan Stern, a planetary scientist and associate vice president for the Southwest Research Institute's Space Sector; and private passenger Ketty Maisonrouge.

They were joined by Cmdr. Mike Masucci and Pilot Kelly Latimer, who flew VSS Unity into suborbit, where the three passengers experienced weightlessness and floated around in space for three to four minutes.

Thursday's spaceflight, the final one of the year, began at 9 a.m. when VMS Eve and VSS Unity lifted off the runway at Spaceport America in front of a crowd of dozens. VSS Unity detached from VMS Eve around 9:44 a.m. at 44,701 feet before firing its rocket motors and shooting into space. The ship landed shortly before 10 a.m.

For Virgin Galactic, founded by Sir Richard Branson, Thursday's flight continues a string of other successful trips to space. In May, the company completed its final assessment before commercial launch, which started in June with a research flight that included three Italians.

Upon return Thursday, Masucci told the crowd that "they all did good," referring to Stern, Gerardi and Maisonrouge.

Stern, known for his role as principal investigator for NASA's New Horizons mission to explore Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, said "things went really fast" in microgravity.

"We saw the ship moving around us in microgravity to a greater extent than I had expected," he said.

Space research

In the roughly three to four minutes in suborbit, passengers Gerardi and Stern — whose spaceflights were sponsored by their respective organizations — conducted five research experiments, some related to medical research that will help shape future health care technologies in space.

Gerardi, for instance, conducted an experiment that looked at how fluid behaves in low-gravity environments — work aimed at improving syringe designs for medicine application and for spacecraft life support systems.

She also wore a biomonitoring garment, called Astroskin, that for the first time collected data during the launch, reentry and landing portions of a flight to space. And she also wore a continuous glucose censor, a device that passively monitored her blood glucose levels throughout the trip.

Stern wore a biomedical harness on Thursday's flight that tracked his vitals. He also had a mockup of a camera for onboard astronomy he will carry on his second trip to space, which he will take with NASA.

Asked how the research gathering went, Gerardi said it "exceeded our expectations."

"What we saw today was extraordinary," she said. "We exceeded anything that we've seen in parabolic flight here on earth immediately in my first block of time."

Looking ahead

The string of commercial spaceflights, Virgin Galactic's 10th to date, has helped the company reach unprecedented milestones in the rapidly emerging commercial space industry.

It was also the second time this year the company flew to space with the goal of conducting research — the first was in late June when two members of the Italian air force and an engineer from the National Research Council of Italy performed more than a dozen experiments in the three minutes they spent in microgravity.

Virgin Galactic then sent three paying passengers in August — including octogenarian Jon Goodwin and a mother-daughter duo from Antigua and Barbuda — to suborbit. That flight served a list of historical milestones, including the first mother-daughter duo and youngest person ever to fly to space.

There were also flights in September and October for paying passengers, bringing the total number of flights from the company to six when you include May's test flight.

Virgin Galactic's longtime goal of reaching the heavens — it has worked for nearly 20 years to fully develop its technology — was a remarkable success in its first year of offering flights to space for paying customers.

It had prepped for two years since its first launch, making improvements to the VSS Unity and its mothership, VMS Eve, for enhanced vehicle durability and reliability.

The company is also working toward more commercial spaceflights next year and expects to launch "Galactic 06" in January. Before that happens, Virgin Galactic will conduct routine vehicle inspections over the next couple of months.

Michael Colglazier, Virgin Galactic's CEO, said Thursday's research flight proved to be "vital to our mission of expanding human knowledge and enabling scientific discoveries.

"We look forward to playing an increasingly important role in space research in the years ahead."