Virgin Galactic unveiled its new SpaceShip Two vehicle. It’s a vehicle that the company will use to replace the previous SpaceShip which crashed in 2014 during a routine test flight.

The vehicle is similar to its predecessor and it will launch and return to the Earth the same way but there are few key changes to mainly to make the spaceship safer and prevent in-flight error. The new SpaceShip Two is called the VSS Unity.This is the vehicle which Virgin Galactic would potentially use to send people on space.

Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group said “Together, we can make space accessible in a way that has only been dreamt of before now; by doing that we can bring positive change to life on Earth.” Virgin Galactic is one of the handful of companies racing to offer private citizens the chance to escape the Earth’s atmosphere.

The spaceship is designed to take six passengers and two pilots into sub orbital space but rather than launching from the ground like most rockets the vehicle is lifted up to an altitude of 50,000 feet by a carrier aircraft called “White Knight Two”, there SpaceShip Two deploys and ignite its rocket engine for 70 seconds to escape the Earth’s atmosphere.

Flight testing is scheduled to take place later this year and that’s when we will really know if this is a safer vehicle than before.