First scientist slated to fly to space on Virgin Galactic’s suborbital tourist rocket
12:18pm PDT - October 14th, 2020 cher - The VergePlanetary scientist Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, who helmed NASA’s Pluto mission, is slated to fly to space on Virgin Galactic’s tourist spaceplane, SpaceShipTwo. He’ll be the first researcher to fly and oversee experiments while on board.