Virgin Galactic has completed its first commercial mission by taking four passengers into suborbital space and returning them safely back to Spaceport America. Space.com’s Mike Wall reports:
Virgin Galactic is up and running.
The company aced its first-ever commercial mission today (June 29), sending four passengers to suborbital space and back. It was a landmark moment for Virgin Galactic, which has big ambitions in the final frontier.
The flight lifted off from Spaceport America in New Mexico at 10:30 a.m. ET (1430 GMT) and reached suborbital space some 58 minutes later. After a few minutes floating at an apogee of 52.9 miles (85.1 kilometers), the space plane then returned to Spaceport America and landed at 11:42 a.m. ET (1542 GMT).
“What a beautiful landing and a perfect way to complete our first commercial flight and our first dedicated science mission. Congratulations to everyone on board,” Virgin Galactic’s Sirisha Bandla said upon touchdown.
British entrepreneur Richard Branson founded Virgin Galactic in 2004. Back then, he predicted the company would be flying paying customers to and from the final frontier by 2007.
That optimism flowed from the performance of SpaceShipOne, which won the $10 million Ansari X Prize in October 2004 after reaching suborbital space twice in less than a week. Virgin Galactic based its suborbital space plane, known as SpaceShipTwo, on that groundbreaking private vehicle, which was hauled aloft by a carrier aircraft and dropped high in the sky. At that point, SpaceShipOne fired up its onboard rocket motor and made its own way to space.
SpaceShipTwo employs the same air-launch strategy, deploying from its carrier plane at an altitude of about 50,000 feet (15,000 m). Passengers aboard the spaceliner experience a few minutes of weightlessness and get to see Earth against the blackness of space before coming back down for a runway landing, which happens 70 to 90 minutes after takeoff.
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