Talking Space Flight With Future Astronauts

One of the things I love most about my job at the Ontario Science Centre is that it gives me opportunities to connect with some pretty amazing people.  I’ve met some incredible communicators, scientists, leaders, astronauts, and people from all walks of life doing amazing things.  Last night my astronomy background gave me an opportunity to work a special event for future astronauts who are participating in the Virgin Galactic commercial space flight program. The group consisted of about 20 people, some of whom were lead flight engineers and technicians forking on SpaceshipTwo.  Others were commercial development and administrators for Virgin...

Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo Crashes

It’s been a rough week in the space flight industry.  On Friday afternoon, a test flight of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo class VSS Enterprise resulted in a catastrophe, crashing down in the Mojave desert, killing one pilot, with the other ejecting and now being treated in hospital. During the test flight, launched by Virgin Galactic’s partner corporation Scaled Composites from the Mojave Spaceport,  WhiteKnightTwo, an aircraft designed to bring SpaceShipTwo to launch altitude, successfully released the spacecraft.  After two minutes, something went wrong, resulting in the eventual crash of the craft. Virgin Galactic released a statement shortly after the accident, saying the National...