The British Entrepreneur Richard Branson has successfully flown to the edge of space and back in his Virgin Galactic
The British business mongul achieved this feet days ahead of a rival launch by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Branson said, ‘I was once a child with a dream looking up to the stars,’ Branson said. ‘Now, I’m an adult in a spaceship.’
The Rocket Plane went into sub-orbital flight on Sunday morning, seventeen years after Branson founded Virgin Galactic to develop commercial spacecraft and cater to future space tourists.
His Virgin Galactic Rocket Plane has taken off for a 1.5-hour mission which will see it reach an altitude where the sky turns black and the Earth’s horizon curves away into the distance..
The Entrepreneur says he wants to evaluate the experience before allowing paying customers aboard next year.
The mission above New Mexico began shortly after 08:30 EST (15:30 BST).
Virgin Galactic is providing an online stream of the event.
Sir Richard Branson haa taken years to get to this point. He first announced his intention to make a space plane in 2004 with the expectation he’d have a commercial service available by 2007.