The launch of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, which flew into space at an altitude of 80km, also makes it the first ever US commercial flight to carry humans
A Virgin Galactic rocket plane blasted off on Thursday and returned safely to the California desert, capping off years of difficult testing to become the first US flight to take humans into space since Nasa’s shuttle programme ended in 2011, and the first US commercial operation to do so ever.
The test flight foreshadows a new era of civilian space travel that could kick off as soon as 2019, with British billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic battling other billionaire-backed ventures, like Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, to be the first to offer suborbital flights to fare-paying tourists.
Virgin’s twin-fuselage carrier airplane WhiteKnightTwo, holding the SpaceShipTwo passenger spacecraft, took off soon after 7am local time from the Mojave Air and Space Port, about 90 miles (145km) north of Los Angeles.
Richard Branson, wearing a leather bomber jacket with a fur collar, attended the take-off along with hundreds of spectators on a crisp morning in the California desert. After the rocket plane reached an altitude of 50 miles (80km), a crying Branson high-fived and hugged spectators.
The carrier airplane had hauled the SpaceShipTwo passenger rocket plane to an altitude of about 45,000 feet (13,700 metres) and released it.
