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The wealthy are waiting for the newly formed space tourism zone to lift off the ground.
The spacecraft took off from Spaceport America at 2.40pm Greenwich Mean Time (5.40pm Lithuanian time) and in about an hour, it will rise to an altitude of 15km, where the aircraft carrier will break off and launch a smaller spacecraft.
Two pilots, Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci, and three Galactic employees, Beth Moses, Colin Bennett and Sirisha Bandla, flew with the businessman on the mission.
R. Branson sought to surpass his American rival Jeff Bezos and become the first man to ascend into space with a spaceship built by his own company.
Bezos has previously announced that his Blue Origin New Shepard rocket will fly into space on July 20.
R. Branson and J. Bezos founded competing companies for short tourist suborbital space flights.
The Virgin Galactic spacecraft is not a classic rocket.
Rather, it is a system of an aircraft carrier that reaches a high altitude and launches a smaller spacecraft, VSS Unity. The spacecraft fires its engines and reaches space in orbit, and then flies back to Earth.
Two more test flights are planned after this flight, and then in 2022, regular commercial flights are due to begin, according to Virgin Galactic.
About 600 people have already booked tickets for that trip. It is said that the price of a ticket reaches 250 thousand. Dollars.
Came back successfully
Branson successfully returned to Earth on Sunday after a trip to space on the Virgin Galactic spacecraft, which he described as a “lifelong experience” and believes the trip will be a boost for the development of profitable space tourism.
“I dreamed of this moment from a young age, but in fact it is impossible to prepare for the moment of seeing Earth from space,” the billionaire said with a smile during a post-flight ceremony in which he and his team members were awarded with special badges.
When it took off, the Unity rocket-powered craft reached its maximum speed of Mach 3.
“Congratulations to the entire amazing team at Virgin Galactic, whose 17 years of hard work and hard work have allowed us to go so far,” Branson said via a live channel as Unity descended, calling the flight an “experience for the entire lifetime”.
Uneven video streaming was the only issue fixed during the flight, so more footage is expected to be released later.
After the trip, R. Branson hugged his grandchildren and other loved ones.
The head of SpaceX, Elonas Muskas, who came to see the flight, immediately wrote on the social network Twitter “Congratulations, good flight!”.
