Aug 7 2003
From The Space Library
X-Prize contestant SpaceShipOne successfully carried out its first glide flight after the White Knight carrier craft towed it to an altitude of 47,000 feet (14,326 meters) and released it. Pilot Michael W. Melvill guided the craft to a desert landing. Scaled Composites, which had built SpaceShipOne, issued a report of the test indicating that the two vehicles had separated cleanly, that handling qualities of the craft had correlated closely with ground-based simulations, and that on-board avionics and cockpit displays had performed flawlessly. (Leonard David, “X-Prize Contestant Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne Flies,” Space News, 9 August 2003.
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