Virgin Galactic's rocket plane, Unity, completed its first commercial spaceflight, a major milestone for the company founded in 2004 by British billionaire Richard Branson, as per a report in The Guardian. 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.
As per the outlet, before the spacecraft switched into re-entry mode and floated back to the runway at Spaceport America near El Paso, Texas, the crew enjoyed a few minutes of weightlessness at the height of the mission and unfurled the Italian flag. Virgin Galactic took to Twitter and said, "Welcome back to Earth, #Galactic01! Our pilots, crew and spaceship have landed smoothly at @Spaceport_NM."
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, as per AFP. Passengers in the space plane's cabin experience a few minutes of weightlessness and catch a glimpse of the Earth's curvature from more than 50 miles (80 kilometres) above sea level.
Around 800 tickets for flights on the aircraft, which may cost up to $450,000 per seat, have already been sold by the company. They intend to eventually construct a fleet big enough to support 400 flights per year.
This comes almost two years after Mr Branson took a test flight along with other personnel to usher in a new era of lucrative space tourism. However, the company faced setbacks, including a brief grounding by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which found that the flight deviated from its assigned airspace and Virgin Galactic did not communicate the "mishap" as required.
