'New Space Age': With Richard Branson's Historic Flight, A New Era Of Space Tourism Opens

Billionaire, philanthropist and Virgin Galactic's CEO Richard Branson on Sunday touched the edge of space with three employees, including one of Indian-origin, and landed safely back to Earth.

With this move, Virgin Galactic became the first privately-owned company to usher in the era of space tourism. This launch has also propelled it ahead of rival Blue Origin, which is set to launch its founder-owner Jeff Bezos along with his brother nine days later on 20 July.

"Congratulations to all those who created such a beautiful space," he said from space.

Virgin Galactic aims to fly two more flights, then the start of regular commercial operations from early 2022. The ultimate goal is to conduct 400 flights per year.

The company has already sold nearly 600 tickets, with each ticket costing nearly $250,000.

Branson flew aboard his Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity spaceplane, along with three company employees to the edge of space on Sunday a little after 10.30 a.m. ET (8 p.m. India time).

Besides Branson, the flight included Beth Moses, Chief Astronaut Instructor, Colin Bennett, lead Operations Engineer, and Indian-origin Sirisha Bandla, Vice President of Government Affairs at Virgin Galactic.

Moses was to serve as cabin lead and test director in space, overseeing the safe and efficient execution of the test flight objectives, while Bennett was to evaluate cabin equipment, procedures, and experience during both the boost phase and in the weightless environment.

Bandla was to evaluate the human-tended research experience, using an experiment from the University of Florida that requires several handheld fixation tubes that were to be activated at various points in the flight profile, and Branson was to evaluate the private astronaut experience, undergoing the same training, preparation and flight as Virgin Galactic's future astronauts.

The pilots were Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci flying VSS Unity, and CJ Sturckow and Kelly Latimer flying VMS Eve.

About 40 minutes after takeoff, Unity dropped from the middle of the mothership and ignited its rocket engine moments later to send Branson and the crew to the edge of space, about 89 kms high, for a few minutes of weightlessness.

With IANS Inputs