Q&A with George Whitesides, CEO of Virgin Galactic

The first orbital test flight of Virgin Orbit’s privately-developed air-launched rocket is scheduled as soon as Sunday off the coast of Southern California, the company said Wednesday.

Virgin Galactic’s second piloted suborbital spaceship made its first rocket-powered test flight Thursday, three-and-a-half years after the loss of an earlier model in an accident that killed one test pilot and injured another.

Richard Branson, the charismatic leader of Virgin Galactic and a driving force in the push to commercialize space travel, vowed to find out what caused the fatal crash of his company’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane, to learn from the tragedy and to press ahead with plans to carry paying customers into space.