SpaceShipOne designer Burt Rutan, who is beginning work on Virgin's space fleet, has promised to ride along with Branson on the first flight.
Tuesday's launch marks the culmination of six years of preparation to bring commercial flights to the space station following the retirement of NASA's space shuttle fleet last year.
While Curiosity's landing is bound to burnish NASA's image and improve its employee morale, the mission may provide only a temporary political boost for an agency that has struggled to chart a new course amid spending constraints, persistent legislative fights and last year's retirement of the space shuttle fleet.
The space agency has retired its fleet of space shuttles and plans to turn much of its focus toward exploring deep into the solar system.
Cardiff helped OceanFreight pick up its first dry-bulk vessels, helps manage that fleet and shares office space with OceanFreight.
Luke Sacks, a spokesman for the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, said the schedule for Fleet Week would be announced soon and declined to offer specifics of the plans.
On Endeavour's return, the only active ship left in the US space agency's (Nasa) shuttle fleet will be Atlantis.
At Kennedy Space Center, the home base of NASA's shuttle fleet, all employees were allowed to return to work Thursday.
Verizon is making an aggressive move into this space, buying earlier this year Hughes Telematics to get into fleet and vehicle data streams.
At the end of this year, the European Space Agency will start to roll out the multi-billion-euro Sentinel fleet of satellites, which aim to echo the Landsat philosophy but with many more types of sensor.
The 90-ton shuttle, heavier than other spacecraft in the fleet, was the only one not outfitted to dock with the international space station.
应用推荐