''Coming Home'': Astronaut Reunites With Daughter After Virgin Galactic Flight, Shares Video

A space researcher has shared a sweet video of her reuniting with her daughter after completing a commercial suborbital flight Galactic 05, launched by Virgin Galactic. According to the Independent, Kellie Gerardi conducted three experiments in fluid dynamics and biomedical research while on board the VSS Unity spaceplane. The flight reached a peak altitude of 87.2 km before safely landing back at Spaceport America in New Mexico.

''Thank you for capturing these moments, @virgingalactic. This was an incredible and powerful core memory for both me and my daughter. My sweet Delta V,'' she wrote on X along with the video. In the video, she shared footage from space and inside the aircraft. When the plane touched back down on the runway, she ran to share a hug with her daughter Delta, who was overjoyed to see her.

See the video here:

Thank you for capturing these moments, @virgingalactic 😭💜 This was an incredible and powerful core memory for both me and my daughter.

My sweet Delta V 🫶 pic.twitter.com/1r7XikYV1N

— Kellie Gerardi (@kelliegerardi) November 3, 2023

Internet users loved the sweet video and congratulated the mother-daughter duo. 

One user wrote, ''Such a proud moment as a parent and visionary.'' Another commented, ''Watching you and Delta over the last several months has been a real joy. Your spaceflight is just another step in your life journey to raise a strong and intelligent human being and you are doing an awesome job! Congratulations!''

A third wrote, ''I am obsessed! How freaking cool  She must feel like the coolest kid on the planet.'' A fourth added, ''This video needs to come with a box of tissues...I was not ready.''

Ms Gerardi works as mission operations lead for Palantir Technologies and as a payload specialist and bioastronautics researcher for the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences (IIAS). 

According to CBS News, her trip was sponsored by the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences while her experiments were developed by the National Research Council of Canada.

When asked how it felt to be one of less than 100 women to ever travel to space, she told Space.com, ''It's amazing. To me, the profundity of that [low number] really just drives home the limiter to human spaceflight. The limiter has always been access and not aptitude. Think of how many incredible women are capable today of getting on a spaceship and conducting science in space and are just waiting for that opportunity. I think it really does drive home how important the democratization of access to space is, and what a huge, huge thing that's going to be. It's going to be a really profound change in human spaceflight, not only for women but for everyone.''

Notably, Galactic 05 will be Virgin's final mission of 2023, with the company expecting to resume its monthly cadence of suborbital flights in January 2024.