FAA investigates Virgin Galactic flight’s out-of-course descent with Richard Branson

Richard Branson’s flight to the edge of space in July is under investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration for leaving its designated airspace mid-flight, the FAA said on Wednesday after a report from The New Yorker. The two pilots of the mission were alerted to amber and red lights in mid-flight which, according to sources at The New Yorker, should have prompted them to cancel the mission. The flight continued and finally landed safely.

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo spaceplane launched from its carrier plane on July 11, carrying founder Branson and three company employees above the company’s New Mexico spaceport, Spaceport America. The rocket plane climbed to 53.5 miles high, grazing the edge of space for a few minutes of weightlessness before returning freely to a runway, using the momentum propelled by the rocket from its ascent. Branson and the company hailed the mission as a success soon after, with company president Mike Moses telling reporters that “the ship looked perfect” upon landing.

But as the spacecraft accelerated to maximum altitude, the two pilots, Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci, saw warnings in the cockpit that the ship was not flying as steeply as it should have been. Such warnings “should scare you,” was quoted by Masucci. The New Yorker as said in a meeting in 2015 with other pilots of the company. This gave pilots two options, according to company procedures: “take immediate corrective action or shut down the rocket engine,” the magazine reports. Triggering an abortion and bringing Branson and his crew back to the ground without reaching space would have been the safest option at the time, multiple sources told Nicholas Schmidle, the author of the article who also published a book. comprehensive on the history of Virgin Galactic earlier this year.

The July flight served Branson’s longtime goal of space travel. Branson, originally scheduled for a later mission, increased his flight shortly after Jeff Bezos announced he would be flying on his space company’s Blue Origin rocket in July. Virgin Galactic has said safety is their top priority, and Branson has denied that rival Bezos’ escape to space played a role in his decision to launch ahead of schedule.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Virgin Galactic said the crew had never been in danger, that the “change of course” was caused by high-level winds and that the company is disputing it. considers “misleading characterizations and conclusions” in New Yorker history. “Our pilots reacted appropriately to these changing flight conditions exactly as they were trained and in strict accordance with our established procedures,” said the spokesperson. “Although the ultimate flight path deviated from our original plan, it was a controlled and intentional flight path that allowed Unity 22 to reach space and land safely in our port. space in New Mexico. “

Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON / AFP via Getty Images

“During its flight on July 11, 2021, the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo vehicle deviated from its air traffic control clearance upon its return to Spaceport America,” an FAA spokesperson said in a statement. “The FAA investigation is ongoing.”

The off-course descent is not Virgin Galactic’s first contact with danger. In 2014, the company suffered a mid-flight disaster during a test flight that killed one pilot and seriously injured another. After that, Branson promised to fly on the ship himself before flying with paying customers, as a sign of confidence in the safety of the vehicle. On another test flight in 2018, with Mackay and Masucci as the pilots, SpaceShipTwo spiraled out of control, spinning and tumbling in the air before the pilots regained their stability and landed safely, Schmidle reports. The cause was later found to be a manufacturing defect that took months to repair. After the plane flew in 2019, engineers discovered extensive damage to a crucial part of the plane, with glue-like material torn apart and exposing a large gap, Schmidle wrote in his book.

by Schmidle New Yorker History also revealed that former Virgin Galactic chief test pilot and flight test director Mark Stucky was fired eight days after Branson’s flight following the revelations in Schmidle’s book. Stucky previously wrote on LinkedIn that he did not leave on his own terms, but it was unclear why he left. This marked the second departure of a senior security-related employee for the company – Todd Ericson, a retired Air Force colonel and former vice president of security and testing at Virgin Galactic , resigned from the company shortly after the 2019 test flight, frustrated by the Virgin Galactic safety culture, according to Schmidle.

Virgin Galactic’s next crewed mission, which will also be its first revenue-generating flight, is scheduled for late September with three members of the Italian Air Force. FAA investigations of unexpected flight events typically prevent future missions from taking place until the agency’s investigation is complete and any potential remediation is made by the company. But the FAA’s investigation into the Unity 22 mission “has no impact on future test flights,” the Virgin Galactic spokesperson said.

Update, September 1, 8:32 p.m. ET: Adds statement from Virgin Galactic spokesperson