White Knight 2 - aka "VMS Eve" leaving Phoenix

I got up and out of the house at an ungodly early hour this morning to get to the airport on the otherside of the Valley where White Knight 2 (aka VMS (Virgin Mother Ship) "Eve") had spent the night after its unscheduled landing on Friday.

I met up with some of the other local aviation photographers and waited to see when she was going to leave. Since the payload (Spaceship Two) wasn't being carried - WK2 was in the air in less than half of the runway.

The pictures below are from her departure almost right over us.

Ssshh - its a secret

Richard Branson's Rocket Launcher, originally uploaded by joe_stremph.

Richard Branson's newest toy (complements of Burt Rutan & Scaled Composites) - is hiding in a hanger outside of Phoenix.

It diverted there after a warning light came on - while they were on the way to overfly the groundbreaking on the Spaceport in NM.

It is now scheduled to leave sometime tomorrow morning and the crew would prefer no one take pictures of it on the ground. Waaah!

[UPDATE - 5:27pm MST - the unscheduled landing made the local paper's website, so I guess it isn't much of a secret anymore. The guy who took the picture that's not shown above any more (it was being used by another web site w/o giving Joe credit, so the picture got removed) - made the local news Friday night.]