Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic made its first commercial flight to the edge of space Thursday 29 with a crew of six astronauts onboard.
Branson now joins an elite group of companies along with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, that can offer paying customers a space adventure experience.
The company stated on their website that it was the second successful spaceflight in two months :‘Galactic 01’ spaceflight carried 13 research payloads and three crew members from the Italian Air Force and the National Research Council of Italy'.
The three of them used the flight to conduct experiments in space that examined how microgravity affects the human body and other materials.
View this post on Instagram
According to the New Scientist, ‘Once the carrier vehicle reached an altitude of around 15 kilometres, it released the VSS Unity, which activated its rocket engine for a steep climb to 80 kilometres above Earth, travelling at around three times the speed of sound. The crew then experienced 5 minutes of weightlessness before descending back to Earth.”
And just how much will it cost to get you to the edge of space? A spot on the aircraft will set you back a mere $R450 00 (R8 489 835,00).
