Spaceflight

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShip Two mothership WhiteKnight Two made its public debut today at 14:47 local time at the Experimental Aircraft Association Airventure air show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

The WhiteKnight Two prototype, named Eve, orbited the airport with two chase planes, one with the call sign Photo one, and then landed and taxied to the off-ramp that meets the Aeroshell square area of Wittman regional airport, where Airventure is always held.

The first tower chatter heard referring to the mothership was that it was "five miles south east" of the airport.

See all the latest news, video and images from EAA AirVenture 2009 on our special Oshkosh page

WhiteKnight Two took off from Mojave air and spaceport, in California, where its prime contractor Scaled Composites is based, at 07:37 local time (12:37 GMT) and flew at about 51,000ft (15,555m) and above 300kt (555km/h) for much of the trip to Wittman airport, a distance of over 1,400nm (2,700km).

During the week WK2 will conduct demonstration flights and on Tuesday Virgin group chairman and Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson will likely fly in the engineers seat aboard the mothership.



Follow the WhiteKnight Two activities at twitter.com/flighthyperbola and at Rob Coppinger's Hyperbola blog, while you can find all of Flightglobal's coverage here.