Virgin Galactic joined forces with NASA to produce ultrafast, next-generation flight vehicles capable of point-to-point air travel across planet Earth.
The spaceflight business and its subsidiary, The Spaceship Company, signed a Space Act Agreement with NASA to collaboratively help generate “technically feasible, high Mach vehicles”—think: supersonic jets—that hold potential for civil applications, according to an announcement released Tuesday. Such agreements empower the space agency to partner up with organizations to specifically support its mission and needs, as it deems appropriate.
Dr. James Kenyon, director of the NASA Aeronautics Advanced Air Vehicles Program said in a statement that the agreement will enable all three “organizations to take advantage of new tools, techniques, and technologies developed over the last 50 years and to explore potential new solutions for the commercial aviation industry.”
The space agency for decades has worked to develop high Mach vehicles and fly faster than the speed of sound. Most recently, NASA tested its X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology, or QueSST aircraft, which aims to make almost no sound as it moves. But through the new effort with Virgin Galactic, the agency also aims to explore more economically- and environmentally-viable approaches to pursuing and creating current and new high-speed technologies and applications.
“The collaboration will aim to inform the development of national strategies using economic and technical foundations with a focus on sustainability,” officials wrote in the announcement.
Positioning itself as “the world’s first commercial spaceline,” Virgin Galactic has been aggressively preparing to c ..
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