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At
about 8 a.m. local time, The VMS Eve carrier plane took off from
Mojave, California, carrying SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity before
releasing it 46,500 feet (14,000 m) above ground, Virgin
Galactic said in a statement.
A rocket motor then accelerated Unity to Mach 1.87 during a
30-second rocket burn before the ship's two pilots shut it down.
The spaceship reached 84,000 feet (25,000 m) before making a
smooth runway landing, the company said.
"Space feels tantalisingly close now," Branson Tweeted after the
test flight.
Virgin Galactic's original SpaceShipTwo vehicle broke apart
during an October 2014 test flight that killed the co-pilot and
seriously injured the pilot, in an accident that was ultimately
attributed to pilot error. Both were employees of Scaled
Composites, a Northrop Grumman subsidiary based in Mojave that
built the vehicle.
The Spaceship Company, a Virgin Galactic sister firm also owned
by Branson's London-based Virgin Group, built the new
SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity, the second in a planned fleet of five,
and took over the test-flight program from Scaled.
In 2016, the space company was granted an operating license to
fly its passenger ship with the world’s first paying space
tourists once final safety tests are completed.
The company has not yet announced a date for the start of
passenger flights but is selling tickets for a ride aboard
SpaceShipTwo at $250,000 a seat.
Rides will take passengers about 62 miles (100 km) above Earth,
high enough to experience a few minutes of weightlessness and
see the curvature of Earth set against the blackness of space.
(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee, editing by Larry
King)
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