Who is in the Virgin Galactic crew?
SIR Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic will fly to space on Sunday, July 11, 2021.
But who will join him in this thrilling mission? Here's what we know about the Unity 22 crew.
Who is in the Virgin Galactic crew?
Sir Richard's space tourism firm Virgin Galactic announced the space trip on July 1, 2021.
The British mogul is planning to beat Jeff Bezos who will also be heading to space on July 20 on Blue Origin's New Shepherd spacecraft.
The flight will be Virgin Galactic's fourth test spaceflight and its first mission with a crew of four onboard.
Richard Branson
Sir Richard Branson is the founder of Virgin Galactic.
He will be evaluating the customer space flight experience.
He will also undergo the same training, preparation and flight as Virgin Galactic’s future astronauts.
Beth Moses
Beth Moses is Virgin Galactic's chief astronaut instructor.
She will serve as space cabin lead and test director.
Moses from Northbrook, Illinois, obtained bachelor and master's degrees in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from Purdue University School of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
She became the first woman to make a spaceflight on a commercially launched vehicle in February 2019.
Colin Bennett
Colin Bennett is the lead operations engineer.
He will be evaluating cabin procedures during boost and weightlessness.
According to his LinkeDln profile, he obtained a master's degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Liverpool.
Sirisha Bandla
Sirisha Bandla is Virgin Galactic's VP of government affairs and research operations.
She will be testing the researcher experience using an experiment from the University of Florida that requires several handheld fixation tubes that will be activated at various points in the flight profile.
After the space trip was announced she tweeted: ''I am so incredibly honored to be a part of the amazing crew of #Unity22, and to be a part of a company whose mission is to make space available to all.''
Dave Mackay
The craft's pilot has over 40 years of experience as a pilot and he has clocked over 14,000 piloting hours in more than 140 types of aircraft.
Mackay studied Aeronautical Engineering at the University of Glasgow.
He is the first native-born Scot to visit space.
LATEST SPACE NEWS
Michael Masucci
Michael Masucci will fly the aircraft alongside Mackey.
READ MORE SUN STORIES
The two of them flew to space with VSS Unity in 2019.
Masucci has over 9000 hours in 70 different aircraft.