Virgin Galactic owner Richard Branson achieved his dream of reaching space on Sunday after successfully flying in his company’s spacecraft, VSS Unity, with three others and two pilots. The company aims to start commercial flights with paying customers in 2022.
The test flight, Virgin Galactic’s first with a full crew, took off at around 10:30 a.m. ET. after a delay of about 90 minutes because of overnight weather conditions at Spaceport America. Branson was joined on his flight by pilots Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci and three company employees and mission specialists – Chief astronaut instructor Beth Moses, lead operations engineer Colin Bennett and government affairs vice president Sirisha Bandla.
Speaking from the spacecraft’s cabin, Branson called the spaceflight the “complete experience of a lifetime.”
“I have dreamt of this moment since I was a kid, and honestly nothing could prepare you for the view of Earth from space,” he said after landing. He also tweeted that going to space was “more magical than I ever imagined.”
VSS Unity had two pilots guiding the vehicle after being released by a carrier aircraft called VMS Eve above 40,000 feet. The spacecraft fired its rocket engine and accelerated to faster than three times the speed of sound in a climb to the edge of space. The spacecraft flew 53 miles above the earth to reach suborbital space.
Branson, Moses, Bennett and Bandla were presented with commercial astronaut wings after the flight by former space station commander and Canadian astronaut, Chris Hadfield.
With his successful visit to space, Branson also became the first space company owner to achieve the feat. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was the first to announced his intention to travel to space on a plane from his company, Blue Origin. Weeks after his early June announcement, Virgin Galactic announced that Branson would travel to space nine days before Bezoz.
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