From takeoff to landing, the missions typically last under two hours.Ĭompany officials hope this will be the final test run before Virgin Galactic can open up rides to paying customers in late June -after years of promises, missed deadlines, and Branson selling off a huge chunk of his original stake in the company. Successful boost, WE HAVE REACHED SPACE! 🌌 #UNITY25- Virgin Galactic May 25, 2023įlights are designed to reach more than 50 miles (80.5 kilometers) above Earth, into altitudes the United States government recognizes as the boundary of outer space.Īt the peak of the flight, passengers are expected to have experienced a few minutes of weightlessness and could peer out the plane’s windows at Earth’s curved horizon and the blackness of outer space. The space plane then coasted back to a landing back at New Mexico’s Spaceport America.

ET that VSS Unity successfully completed the blast toward space. Virgin Galactic confirmed just before 12:30 p.m. The space plane is designed to then detach from the mothership, fire its rocket engine and swoop straight up with its two pilots at the controls. The rocket-powered plane is designed to ride to about 50,000 feet (15,240 meters) above Earth’s surface while attached beneath the wing of a massive, twin-fuselage mothership, dubbed “Eve” by the company. ET, according to Virgin Galactic’s Twitter account. The company’s space plane, VSS Unity, carried two pilots and a crew of four Virgin Galactic employees on the Thursday test flight, which took off from a runway in New Mexico around 11:15 a.m.

Virgin Galactic - the space tourism company founded by British billionaire Richard Branson - has returned its supersonic plane to the edge of space for the first time since 2021, when Branson made his own journey toward the cosmos.

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