Rocket Report: Virgin soars, Falcon Heavy cores on the go, Astra failure

Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base. (credit: Aurich Lawson/SpaceX)

Welcome to Edition 1.29 of the Rocket Report! This week, we send our hearty congratulations to Virgin Galactic, which reached an important milestone Thursday with its first flight above 80km. We also have some good news on the commercial crew front, with multiple flights looking promising for 2019.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Virgin flies into space (probably). With Mark "Forger" Stucky and C.J Sturckow piloting the vehicle, the VSS Unity vehicle was dropped from its White Knight Two carrier aircraft on Thursday before burning its rocket motor. During that 60-second burn, it reached a velocity of Mach 2.9 and soared to an altitude of 82.68km. These were records for the company, which may begin flying space tourists in 2019.