Spaceshipone to try for Monday launch

Spaceshipone, the space craft built by Scaled Composites, is to attempt a launch on Monday. The ship is the main element of their bid for the X-Prize. Although they have had many previous sucessful test flights, the Monday attempt will be the first to satisfy the X-Prize requirements and touch the bottom of space (~100Km / 62.5 M High).

The launch will be early on Monday morning in the Mojave desert, and members of the public are welcome to watch (interested readers can get more information on this below). It will take 1 hour for the mother ship, White Knight, to reach 47,000 feet, at which point it will drop Spaceshipone. SSO will then fly on its own rockets for 25 minutes, spending 3 minutes weightless and gravity free in space.

The X-Prize has mainy requirements, all of which designed to get more commerical interest in space (and space launches). The prize stipulates that the craft must do a re-run within two weeks, so if Monday's launch is a sucess then Spaceshipone could be up in the air again very soon.

The first ship that satisfies the X-Prize requirements will win a $10 million prize.

View: More info on Spaceshipone