Virgin Galactic's first space tourism flight takes off with three civilian passengers

The long-awaited, first-ever civilian space tourism flight has taken off into the weightlessness of space with three passengers.

On Thursday, the Virgin Galactic flight, which is a culmination of a nearly two-decade programme for commercial space tourism, lifted off from Spaceport America in New Mexico.

The three civilian passengers

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Aboard the space tourism flight are 80-year-old Jon Goodwin, an adventurer who competed in the 1972 Olympic games as a canoeist for Britain; 46-year-old Keisha Schahaff, a health coach from Antigua and Barbuda; and her daughter, 18-year-old Anastatia Mayers, a student of philosophy and physics at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.

The group, as per AFP, will spend a few minutes floating weightless in space at around 53 miles (85 kilometres) above sea level. There, they will get to admire the curvature of the Earth from space, before the spacecraft glides back to Earth.

Touchdown

As the spacecraft pushed above 80 kilometres (50 miles) in altitude,—the level that marksthe edge of space where the pull of gravity is minimal, Virgin Galactic announcer Sirisha Bandla exclaimed that the civilian passengers "are officially astronauts. Welcome to space."

The craft started descending after spending a few minutes in space. As per AFP, it has safely landed in the US state of New Mexico, on the same runway they took off from.

Virgin Galactic

This mission is Richard Branson's company's second commercial flight. It has been named Galactic 02.The previous flight carried a group of senior Italian Air Force officers at the end of June. They carried out several experiments on board, which means that the trip wasn't purely for pleasure.

Founded in 2004, Virgin Galactic between 2005 and 2014 sold around 800 tickets for seats on future commercial flights. 600 of these were sold for $200,000 to $250,000, and 200 more since then were sold for $450,000 each.

(With inputs from agencies)

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