- Virgin Galactic plans to launch its first space tourist flight.
- The flight took off in the early hours of Thursday and is on its way to space.
Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic's first flight carrying space tourists took off in the early hours of Thursday.
The company's Galactic 02 mission is now flying up to 50,000 feet, where it will release the VSS Unity spacecraft that will soar up 300,000 feet to the edge of Earth's orbit.
This is the firm's first flight carrying private customers, including an 80-year-old Olympian who purchased his ticket 18 years ago for $250,000 and a mother and daughter duo who only found out they had won tickets to travel to space when Sir Richard turned up at their home.
Virgin Galactic started livestreaming the flight Thrusday at 11 a.m. ET. Watch it here:
Who are Virgin Galactic's first space tourists?
The crew includes 80-year-old Jon Goodwin and mother-daughter duo Keisha Schahaff and Anastatia Mayers.
Goodwin competed in the 1972 Munich games as a canoeist and is due to be the first Olympian to travel to the edge of space.
The 80-year-old, who purchased his ticket in October 2005 for $250,000, told Sky News he "certainly did" worry it would never happen. He was the fourth person to grab a ticket, he said.
"I always owned fast cars, and to accelerate, as we will do, from nought to Mach 1 in 8.5 seconds, 770 miles an hour, will be extremely exciting," he said.Goodwin was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2005 and will be only the second person with the condition to go to space, according to Virgin Galactic.
Keisha Schahaff won her tickets through a raffle while on a Virgin flight from Antigua to London in 2021.
Months later, she got a surprise visit from Sir Richard at her home in the Caribbean. "The whole team just swarmed into my house saying 'You're the winner, you're going to space,'" Schahaff told the BBC.
The health and wellness coach decided to bring along her 18-year-old daughter Anastatia Mayers, a second-year philosophy and physics student at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. It was on the trip to sort out a visa for her daughter's education that Schahaff entered the raffle.
This will be the first time a mother-daughter duo will fly to space, and Mayers is due to be only the second youngest person to go to space, per Virgin Galactic.
"For me and my daughter together, it's more than a dream come true," said Schahaff.
The passengers will be joined by Beth Moses, Chief Astronaut Instructor for Virgin Galactic.
What can these passengers expect during the flight?
This is Virgin Galactic's second commercial flight and the first to carry paying customers. Galactic 01 took off on June 29, carrying a three-person crew from the Italian Air Force and the National Research Council of Italy.
If all goes to plan, the spaceship known as VSS Unity, will take off attached to a "mothership" aircraft that will carry it to an altitude of 50,000 feet. The spaceship will then detach and ignite its rocket motor to shoot up to space.
After reaching its peak, around 300,000 feet above Earth, the ship will start falling back down. Passengers will experience a brief few minutes of microgravity as the vessel reenters Earth's atmosphere and glides back down to the surface. The whole trip should take about 90 minutes.
The passengers were in New Mexico for a 5-day readiness program ahead of the flight designed to prepare them "physically, mentally and spiritually" for the trip, per Virgin Galactic's website.
Virgin Galactic has long come under fire as more than 800 ticket holders are waiting for their turn on the flight, which reportedly includes billionaire Elon Musk.
Tickets are being advertised for up to $450,000 a flight, Insider previously reported.
The company has recently stirred controversy for flying its first commercial flight less than a week after OceanGate Expedition's Titan submersible killed five paying customers on board a tourist trip to the Titanic shipwreck.
Virgin Galactic has previously said it plans to send tourists to space three times a month once its operations are up and running.