Virgin Galactic made the first commercial flight into space

Photo: Virgin Galactic 

< p>On Thursday, June 29, billionaire Richard Branson's company Virgin Galactic successfully made its first commercial passenger flight into space. This was reported on the company's page on Twitter.

The launch of the VSS Unity rocket plane took place from Spaceport America in the state of New Mexico at around 17:30 Kyiv time.

Undocking the spacecraft from the carrier was conducted at an altitude of 15 km, after which it rose to an altitude of 85 km.

The Galactic 01 mission included specialists from the Air Force and the National Research Council of Italy – it was reported that they will study the effect of microgravity on the human body.

At the maximum height, the crew was in weightlessness for several minutes. At 18:42 it became known that the pilots, crew and spacecraft had successfully landed. The flight lasted 72 minutes in total.

Virgin Galactic plans to conduct its next suborbital flight in August. The company has already sold about 800 tickets for future commercial flights worth up to $450,000 per seat.

Billionaire Richard Branson wants to make such flights every month to compete with Elon Musk with his SpaceX in the space market.

Prepared by: Serhiy Daga