Spaceport America, New Mexico— Aiming for another test before the anticipated start of commercial spaceflight, Virgin Galactic says a New Mexico native will join the crew of a test flight planned for late May. The space company made the announcement Monday, naming Las Cruces native Jamila Gilbert to the crew of four astronauts and two pilots in the VSS (Virgin Spaceship) Unit.
According to Virgin, Gilbert will be among the first 100 women to reach space. The company highlights her experience in a press release, saying that Gilbert is a Latina woman with Purépecha-Mexican roots who is studying linguistics, museum conservation, anthropology and studio art.
Gilbert is also a graduate of New Mexico State University (NMSU) and has led Virgin Galactic’s internal communications team since 2019. The company says she is “a good place to evaluate our customer readiness program” because her experience it is not from “a technical or engineering perspective”. .”
The space flight planned for the end of May will be the 25th flight of the Unity spacecraft. Virgin Galactic says the crew will focus on “a final evaluation of the complete space flight system and astronaut experience before it opens for commercial service at the end of June.”
At the end of April, Virgin successfully completed an airplane flight with Unity. It marked the first time the spacecraft had flown in the skies over New Mexico since the company’s only other fully crewed flight in the summer of 2021.
Gilbert, the first New Mexican native to fly on Virgin’s spacecraft, will join three other astronauts on the flight deck, including Chris Huie, Luke Mays and Beth Moses. Mays and Moses will serve as astronauts and lead astronaut instructors on the flight. Huie is an aerospace engineer and a senior manager of the company’s flight science engineering team.
Virgin has yet to define exactly what day in May the crew made the flight. Mike Masucci has been appointed commander of Unity Flight 25, while CJ Sturckow will serve as the flight’s pilot. Unity’s transport aircraft, VMS Eve, will be flown by Commander Jameel Janjua and Pilot Nicola Pecile.
After the long-awaited test flight in May, Virgin says it should be ready to take its first commercial flight, Galactic 01, by the end of June. By the end of 2022, Virgin said it had collected approximately 800 spaceflight tickets worth $101 million in deposits and fees from “future astronauts.”
