Late next week I’ll be undertaking my first spaceflight, flying a training and “risk reduction” mission funded by my employer, the Southwest research Institute (SwRI). This flight is in preparation for a NASA-SwRI suborbital research mission that is coming up for me as well, hopefully next year. That research flight will feature two experiments—one to assess the efficacy of the spacecraft for doing suborbital astronomy, and one to take physiological data on an experimenter undergoing suborbital spaceflight.

Late next week, I’m scheduled to launch aboard Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity on a suborbital spaceflight. I’m not flying as a private astronaut, though, as most VG customers are, but as a researcher, headed to work in space.