Meet the crew of Virgin Galactic's 2nd commercial spaceflight

A white, grey-haired man with a beard, a smiling black woman, and a younger smiling black woman with facial piercings pose for the Galactic02 crew portrait.

Virgin Galactic has announced the crew for its second commercial spaceflight. Galactic-02 is scheduled to fly a three-person crew, plus the Virgin Galactic astronaut instructor who trained them, plus two company pilots, on a flight to suborbital space on Thursday (Aug. 10).

Virgin Galactic's launch system involves a double-fuselage airplane, which carries the smaller SpaceShipTwo vehicle, VSS Unity, as a payload. VMS Eve, the carrier plane, takes off from a runway at Virgin's Spaceport America, in New Mexico, and flies to around 50,000 feet (15,000 meters), before dropping VSS Unity, which fires its rocket motor to climb the rest of the way to space.