Testing of Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne continues in the skies over Mojave,
California.
Rutan’s group at Scaled Composites is busily working on more aggressive shakeouts of the suborbital, passenger-carrying craft, including a second glide test of the craft on August 27.
"We are very busy testing here in Mojave," Rutan told
SPACE.com . "This week we will run our third full-duration firing of the hybrid motor," he said. The hybrid motor is critical to propelling the SpaceShipOne to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere and snagging the $10 million X Prize.
Second glide test
In the second glide flight of SpaceShipOne, the flying qualities and performance in the spaceship re-entry or "feather" mode were evaluated. In this test, the vehicle’s tail section was moved to an upward position.
Pilot Mike Melvill put SpaceShipOne through an assertive set of in-flight tests.
Transition to the feather mode occurred at 43,000 feet. As the tail booms and aft wing transitioned upward, the vehicle body smoothly pitched up and then returned to an approximately level pitch attitude during about 70-seconds of fully-feathered descent.
A smooth touchdown of SpaceShipOne was made ten-and-a-half minutes after launch from the White Knight carrier vehicle.
Aborted drop
An earlier attempt on August 27 to fly SpaceShipOne on its second free-flight was aborted about 20 minutes before launch.
Cause of the problem centered on a Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation malfunction that occurred in the vehicle’s avionics system.
The mated pair -- the White Knight/SpaceShipOne -- continued to test other systems while in flight, then returned to Mojave airport in mated landing mode.
After the GPS unit’s repair, the combined craft took to the air again and successfully accomplished the slated test objectives.
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