Virgin Atlantic completes a tourism space flight

Would you like to visit outer space?

How does one do that?

One way is to become an astronaut, train for months, and then wait for a chance to be in space.

The other is to go as a tourist – pay for a brief space visit.

On Thursday, Virgin Galactic, a sister concern of Virgin Atlantic Airlines and founded by the same person – Richard Branson, made its first ever tourist excursion into space.

The first flight was in collaboration with the Italian Air Force.

The passengers were:

 Col. Walter Villadei – who is likely to fly on a SpaceX mission later this year.

Lt. Col. Angelo Landolfi – who has been a medical doctor for Russian cosmonauts.

Pantaleone Carlucci – an engineer with Italy’s National Research Council

Colin Bennett – an astronaut instructor from Virgin Atlantic

The journey lasted about 90 minutes.

It started from Virgin Galactic’s spaceport in New Mexico.

The aircraft is called VMS Eve. It took off like a normal airplane.

The aircraft reached an altitude of 40,000 feet above the Earth. At that point, it fired the rocket – VMS Unity, vertically upwards.

The thrust lasted about a minute and VMS Unity reached more than 80 kms above the Earth’s surface – this point is considered as the line between Earth and space by the US.

At the peak, the vehicle experienced weightlessness for a while. Then, it came back to the VMS Eve and made its way back to Earth through a regular runway landing.

About Virgin Galactic

Virgin Galactic was founded in 2004. It made its first space flight in 2023. The company reportedly has a waitlist of 800 customers waiting to visit space as tourists.

Image Credit: All images from the Twitter feed of Virgin Galactic