Richard Branson successfully completes flight to outer space with Virgin Galactic

Billionaire Virgin Group founder, Sir Richard Branson has successfully completed his trip to outer space on board the Virgin Galactic passenger rocket plane with two pilots and three other passengers. Though it was scheduled to take off at 2.00p.m. WAT, it finally took off at 3.30p.m. WAT.

The three people that accompanied him today were:

• Beth Moses, Chief Astronaut Instructor at Virgin Galactic. She will handle the training for all of the company’s future customers;⁠
• Colin Bennett, lead operations engineer and ⁠
• Sirisha Bandla, Virgin Galactic’s vice president of government affairs and research.⁠

The pilots of the were Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci. Spaceflight Unity 22 took off from Virgin Galactic’s operational base at Spaceport America in the New Mexico desert.

The Virgin group founder and Virgin Galactic’s space plane Unity reached a maximum height of about 280,000 feet, or 55 miles, before gliding back down to Earth. This was the fourth Virgin Galactic flight as it had conducted three previous test flights into space with crews of just two or three.

As Branson floated around in microgravity, he taped a message using cameras onboard the space plane which was shared on his Instagram page:

“I was once a child with a dream looking up to the stars. Now I’m an adult in a spaceship looking down to our beautiful Earth. To the next generation of dreamers: if we can do this, just imagine what you can do.”

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Richard Branson (@richardbranson)

Roughly 600 people from 58 countries have reserved tickets worth up to $250,000 to be in the first waves of space tourists on the Virgin Galactic. The company plans to launch two additional flights before commercial service begins in 2022.

Billionaire Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos will also be going into space in 9 days time on board the New Shepard, the rocket ship made by his space company, Blue Origin