Virgin Galactic achieves milestone with successful first commercial spaceflight; Check out ticket price
Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson's space tourism company, achieved a critical milestone on June 29 when it completed its first commercial spaceflight. The Virgin Space Ship (VSS) Unity spacecraft, carrying the Galactic 01 crew, safely returned to land after a successful journey to space.
FollowVirgin Galactic's rocket plane, Unity, successfully completed its maiden commercial spaceflight, marking a significant accomplishment for the business that British billionaire Richard Branson launched in 2004. Two Italian air force colonels, an aeronautical engineer from Italy's National Research Council and a Virgin Galactic instructor flew with the two pilots of the aircraft on the 90-minute sub-orbital flight. The spacecraft was piloted by retired American Air Force commander Mike Masucci and former Italian Air Force pilot Nicola Pecile.
According to the reports, the crew experienced a few minutes of weightlessness at the height of the trip and unfurled the Italian flag before the spacecraft shifted into re-entry mode and drifted back to the runway at Spaceport America in El Paso, Texas.Â
Virgin Galactic took to Twitter and said, "Welcome back to Earth, #Galactic01! Our pilots, crew and spaceship have landed smoothly at @Spaceport_NM."
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Virgin Galactic uses a "mothership" aircraft with two pilots that takes off from a runway, gains high altitude and drops a rocket-powered plane that soars into space at nearly Mach 3 before gliding back to Earth.
The business has already sold about 800 seats for flights on the aircraft, with each seat potentially costing up to $450,000. They plan to eventually build a fleet large enough to accommodate 400 flights annually. Virgin Galactic aims to get customers aloft as soon as safely possible. The second commercial flight, Galactic 02, is targeted for early August, and the company plans to fly Unity monthly from then on.
This comes nearly two years after Branson and other employees completed a test flight to herald in a new age of successful space travel. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) briefly grounded the firm after discovering that Virgin Galactic failed to report the "mishap" as required and that the aircraft had diverted from its allotted airspace. This was one of the company's failures.
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