Image copyright Virgin Galactic Image caption Virgin Galactic's plane will be carried to a height of 12,000m before its rocket ignites

The latest test flight by Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic successfully rocketed to the edge of space and back.

The firm's SpaceShipTwo passenger rocket ship reached a height of 82.7km, beyond the altitude at which US agencies have awarded astronaut wings.

It marked the plane's fourth test flight and followed earlier setbacks in the firm's space programme.

Sir Richard is in a race with Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to send the first fee-paying passengers into space.

He founded the commercial spaceflight company in 2004, shortly after Mr Musk started SpaceX and Jeff Bezos established Blue Origin.

In 2008, Virgin Galactic first promised sub-orbital spaceflight trips for tourists would be taking place "within 18 months". It has since regularly made similar promises to have space flights airborne in the near future.

But delays and a fatal crash in 2014 prevented Sir Richard's original ambitions.

On Thursday, the SpaceShipTwo passenger rocket ship took off from the Mojave Desert in California.

The company said the space ship's motor burned for 60 seconds, travelling at 2.9 times the speed of sound as it gained height.

The rocket carried two pilots and a mannequin named Annie as a stand-in passenger, as well as four research experiments for NASA.

"Today we have shown Virgin Galactic can open space to the world," Sir Richard said.

The US government has awarded astronaut wings to pilots who ventured farther than roughly 80km beyond earth's surface.

But Thursday's flight did not breach the 100km Karman Line, which many organisations use to resolve debates about where space begins.

While the trip marked a milestone for Virgin Galactic, the firm's rivals have already ventured farther - albeit without humans on board.

SpaceX, in partnership with NASA, is planning crewed missions for early next year. Mr Bezos has also said Blue Origin plans to send its first crew to space in 2019.

Virgin Galactic, which is charging $250,000 for a 90-minute flight, has said more than 600 people have bought tickets or put down deposits for an eventual voyage.</s>'An Indescribable Feeling': Virgin Galactic Makes Historic Trip To Edge Of Space

Virgin Galactic says it has reached a rather lofty milestone.

During a test flight Thursday morning in Mojave, Calif., a pair of pilots flying the company's SpaceShipTwo spacecraft hit an altitude of 51.4 miles. That height clears the 50-mile threshold that is sometimes considered the boundary of space.

"Today, as I stood among a truly remarkable group of people with our eyes on the stars, we saw our biggest dream and our toughest challenge to date fulfilled," Virgin founder Richard Branson said in a statement released Thursday. "It was an indescribable feeling: joy, relief, exhilaration and anticipation for what is yet to come."

The space tourism company's feat marks the first successful manned space flight launched on U.S. soil since NASA retired its space shuttle program in 2011. It has also earned the plane's pilots, Mark "Forger" Stucky and Frederick "CJ" Sturckow, commercial astronaut wings from the Federal Aviation Administration.

"Like the early days of aviation, these commercial space flights take grit and innovation — the very attributes it takes to blaze a trail for generations to follow," the FAA said in its announcement. "It's that grit and innovation we want to recognize."

It should be noted that Virgin is using one measure of where space begins — but it's not the only one. Perhaps the most common definition of space is the Karman Line, which is about 62 miles (100 km) above sea level.

"In theory, once this 100 km line is crossed, the atmosphere becomes too thin to provide enough lift for conventional aircraft to maintain flight," the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration explains, noting that many international organizations use the Karman Line as their own benchmark. "At this altitude, a conventional plane would need to reach orbital velocity or risk falling back to Earth."

However you measure it, though, the flight represents a triumph for Virgin Galactic — and a stark change from just over four years ago, when the company grabbed headlines for a very different, altogether tragic reason. In October 2014, its spacecraft crashed during a test flight over the Mojave Desert, killing one of the pilots aboard and severely injuring the other.

The National Transportation Safety Board's months-long investigation into the incident ultimately concluded that it was caused by human error — though, as NPR's Geoff Brumfiel reported at the time, "investigators found that SpaceShipTwo's design was also to blame." The believed that the ship should have had better safeguards to protect against such mistakes.

So the company went to work on updating the design, ultimately rolling out the ship flown Thursday, which goes by the name VSS Unity. Earlier this year, the supersonic plane climbed to about 32 miles during its third-ever rocket-powered flight.

"I've been so proud of the [Virgin Galactic] team, how they've responded to [the tragedy] and really moved forward with a sense of urgency," Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides told CNN Business two weeks ago.

Unlike other rockets launched by NASA, Virgin's spacecraft does not make a vertical launch from a pad on the ground. Instead, it is carried into the sky by another, larger plane, which then detaches the craft and drops it like a bomb. Then, the VSS Unity activates its rockets to push itself even faster, turning upward at the same time.

Thursday's test flight "saw a 60 second planned rocket motor burn which propelled VSS Unity to almost three times the speed of sound and to an apogee of 51.4 miles," the company explained in its news release. "As VSS Unity coasted upwards through the black sky and into space, Virgin Galactic Mission Control confirmed the news and congratulated the two astronaut pilots: 'Unity, Welcome to Space.' "

The successful spaceflight is something of a coup for Virgin Galactic, which has been competing with other commercial space ventures — Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin among them — in what is increasingly becoming a crowded field. While SpaceX has had some high-profile launches of its own lately, Virgin Galactic says Thursday's flight marks "the very first time that a crewed vehicle built for commercial, passenger service, has reached space."

The development also likely comes as welcome news to the prospective space tourists who have already invested heavily in tickets aboard the first official flights, whenever they get off the ground. The price for a single ticket runs up to a quarter of a million dollars.</s>Richard Branson's commercial spaceflight company Virgin Galactic literally soared to new heights during a Thursday morning test flight of its rocket-powered SpaceShipTwo space plane. It returned safely to Earth after the flight.

"SpaceShipTwo, welcome to space," the company tweeted during live coverage of the flight from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. The space claim is a bit of a gray area.

SpaceShipTwo, named the VSS Unity, hitched a ride on Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnightTwo aircraft before separating and taking off under its own power. The winged spaceship reached 51.4 miles (82.7 kilometers) above the surface of Earth and achieved a speed of Mach 2.9. The rocket motor burned for 60 seconds.

NASA says space starts at roughly 62 miles (100 kilometers) above sea level, but SpaceShipTwo's pilots likely experienced microgravity during the journey.

Virgin Galactic can argue in favor of its claim to reaching space. The US Air Force awards astronaut wings to pilots who top the 50-mile mark.

The VSS Unity carried four NASA-sponsored experiments on board, including a vibration-isolation platform and an experiment that simulates how the dusty surface of an asteroid reacts to an impact in microgravity.

Virgin Galactic intends to eventually take space tourists on flights. Branson said in July he hopes to be one of the first passengers to go for a ride.

Thursday's test flight gives Virgin Galactic a step up in the private space-tourism race. Elon Musk's SpaceX has ambitious plans to carry passengers around the moon and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is conducting rocket tests, but both rival companies have yet to carry humans into space.

NASA tweeted its congratulations to Virgin Galactic for "successfully flying to suborbital space."

This was Virgin Galactic's fourth powered test flight of SpaceShipTwo. "Overall the goal of this flight is to fly higher and faster than previous flights," Virgin Galactic said. Mission achieved.

First published Dec. 18, 8:46 a.m. PT.

Update, 9:58 a.m. PT: Adds NASA congratulations and more context on space tourism.</s>Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity soared into space Thursday and reached an altitude of more than 270,000 feet — past the 50-mile mark the U.S. government uses to define the edge of space.

The Unity's fourth test flight began Thursday morning at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. The spaceplane was attached to its mothership, WhiteKnightTwo, before being released.

Its rocket motors were then ignited, helping to carry the spacecraft into the galaxy.

Before its descent to Earth, it reached an altitude of 271,268 feet (51.4 miles).

The craft, also known as SpaceShipTwo, was piloted by two veteran pilots, Mark "Forger" Stucky and C.J. Sturckow. Virgin Galactic's founder, Richard Branson, watched the flight from the ground with his son, Sam.

Branson had promised to start taking tourists — about 800 people have paid $250,000 each for tickets — to the edge of space by the end of the year. But this test flight over the Mojave Desert carried only a pilot and co-pilot, according to Virgin Galactic.

"We plan to burn the rocket motor for longer than we ever have in flight before, but not to its full duration," the company said ahead of Thursday's flight. "At the end stages of the rocket burn in the thin air of the mesosphere and with the speeds that we expect to achieve, additional altitude is added rapidly."

The company's goal is to get to the Kármán line, the boundary between the upper atmosphere and outer space, where future space tourists will get to look back at Earth and experience weightlessness.

"If all goes to plan our pilots will experience an extended period of micro-gravity as SpaceShipTwo coasts to apogee, although they will remain securely strapped in throughout," Virgin Galactic said before the flight. "They should also have some pretty spectacular views, which we look forward to sharing as soon as possible post flight."

In July, during its third test flight, the spaceplane reached an altitude of 170,800 feet (32.3 miles), more than halfway to the goal of reaching the edge of space.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin also intend to take space tourists up on brief suborbital flights for a substantial fee.

It's not clear if VSS Unity will be ready in time to hit Branson's goal of carrying paid customers by the end of December.

It wouldn't be the first time the entrepreneur got ahead of himself. After establishing Virgin Galactic in 2004 he said it would be ready for passengers by 2007.

This time around the company is at least hedging its bets.

"Whether we complete all our objectives during the next flight or need to wait a little longer, we remain committed to completing the final stages of this extraordinary flight test program as quickly, but more importantly as safely, as possible," Virgin Galactic said in its statement.</s>Virgin Galactic reaches space for the first time during its 4th powered flight from Mojave, Calif. The aircraft called VSS Unity reached an altitude of 271,268 feet reaching the lower altitudes of space. (AP Photo/Matt Hartman)

MOJAVE, Calif. (AP) — Virgin Galactic’s tourism spaceship climbed more than 50 miles high above California’s Mojave Desert on Thursday, reaching for the first time what the company considers the boundary of space.

The rocket ship hit an altitude of 51 miles (82 kilometers) before beginning its gliding descent, said mission official Enrico Palermo. It landed on a runway minutes later.

“We made it to space!” Palermo said.

Thursday’s supersonic flight takes Virgin Galactic a big step closer to turning the dream of commercial space tourism into reality. The company aims to take paying customers on the six-passenger rocket, which is about the size of an executive jet. Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson has said he wants to be one of the first on board.

Branson greeted the two pilots after the test, declaring “Space is Virgin territory!”

Virgin Galactic considers 50 miles (80 kilometers) the boundary of space because it is used by the U.S. Air Force and other U.S. agencies. That’s different than a long-held view that the boundary is at 62 miles (100 kilometers). Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides noted that recent research favors the lower altitude.

At the start of the test flight, a special jet carrying the Virgin Space Ship Unity flew to an altitude near 43,000 feet (13,100 meters) before releasing the craft. The spaceship ignited its rocket engine and it quickly hurtled upward and out of sight of viewers on the ground. The spaceship reached Mach 2.9, nearly three times the speed of sound.

The two test pilots — Mark “Forger” Stucky and former NASA astronaut Rick “CJ” Sturckow — will be awarded commercial astronaut wings, said Federal Aviation Administration official Bailey Edwards.

“It was a great flight and I can’t wait to do it again,” said Sturckow, who flew on the space shuttle four times.

Virgin Galactic’s development of its spaceship took far longer than expected and endured a setback when the first experimental craft broke apart during a 2014 test flight, killing the co-pilot.

More than 600 people have committed up to $250,000 for rides that include several minutes of weightlessness and a view of the Earth far below.

The endeavor began in 2004 when Branson announced the founding of Virgin Galactic in the heady days after the flights of SpaceShipOne, the first privately financed manned spacecraft that made three flights into space.

Funded by the late billionaire Paul G. Allen and created by maverick aerospace designer Burt Rutan, SpaceShipOne won the $10 million Ansari X Prize. The prize was created to kick-start private development of rocket ships that would make spaceflight available to the public.

When Branson licensed the SpaceShipOne technology, he envisioned a fleet carrying paying passengers by 2007, launching them from a facility in southern New Mexico called Spaceport America.

But there were significant setbacks. Three technicians were killed in 2007 by an explosion while testing a propellant system at Scaled Composites LLC, which built SpaceShipOne and was building the first SpaceShipTwo for Virgin Galactic.

Then, in 2014, SpaceShipTwo broke apart during a test flight by Scaled Composites when the co-pilot prematurely unlocked its unique “feathering” system and it began to deploy. The co-pilot was killed but the injured pilot managed to survive a fall from high altitude with a parachute.

During descent, the craft’s twin tails are designed to rotate upward to slow it down, then return to a normal flying configuration before the craft glides to a landing on a runway.

New versions of SpaceShipTwo are built by a Virgin Galactic sister company and flight testing is now in-house. Its previous test flight reached 32 miles (52 kilometers).

Branson isn’t alone in the space tourism business: Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is planning to take space tourists on suborbital trips, using the more traditional method of a capsule atop a rocket that blasts off from a launch pad. SpaceX’s Elon Musk recently announced plans to take a wealthy Japanese entrepreneur and his friends on a trip around the moon.</s>Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic just unveiled a new space plane that'll one day carry astronaut wannabees to the fringes of space.

This vehicle will replace the one that fatally crashed more than a year ago and is supposed to be not only safer but also smarter this time around. Tickets to ride this thing are likely well out of your price range, but if you're still interested in what it's called, how it works, and what makes it different from the company's old spacecraft, we've explained all you need to know.

New SpaceShipTwo: What is Virgin Galactic?

Virgin Galactic is Virgin Group's spaceflight company founded by Sir Richard Branson in 2004. It is developing commercial spacecraft, with the purpose of providing suborbital spaceflights to paying space tourists. It also conducts suborbital launches for space science missions as well as orbital launches of small satellites. It eventually plans to provide orbital human spaceflights too.

New SpaceShipTwo: What is VSS Enterprise?

The VSS Enterprise was Virgin Galactic's first SpaceShipTwo spaceplane. It was built by Scaled Composites, named after the USS Enterprise from the Star Trek TV series, had its first flight in 2010, and was intended to be the first of five suborbital spacecraft for Virgin Galactic. It broke apart during its fourth flight in late 2014 due to a co-pilot error. Co-pilot Michael Alsbury died in the accident.

New SpaceShipTwo: What is VSS Unity?

Virgin Galactic unveiled its new SpaceShipTwo on 19 February 2016 at a ceremony at the Mojave Air and Spaceport in California. Professor Stephen Hawking dubbed it the VSS Unity. This spacecraft will bring space tourists into sub-orbital space in the near feature. The VSS Unity replaced the SpaceShipTwo VSS Enterprise that crashed during a test flight in 2014.

New SpaceShipTwo: Is VSS Unity different from VSS Enterprise?

The VSS Unity is the first vehicle to be manufactured by The Spaceship Company, Virgin Galactic’s manufacturing arm.

It looks nearly identical to its predecessor and is able to launch and re-enter the Earth's atmosphere like before. It's also more automated, has new fail-safes to prevent pilots from making mistakes, and is equipped with a rocket engine that uses a different rubber-like fuel for more efficient combustion. These changes haven't been tested in flight.

Over 700 engineers worked on the rocket. It is designed to carry up to six passengers and two crew members on a five-minute flight. During flight, the spaceship will be hauled beneath the wing of a larger aircraft and released at an altitude of about 45,000 feet. It'll soar before rocketing about 62 miles above Earth, at which point it will start falling back toward Earth.

New SpaceShipTwo: How much does the trip cost?

Virgin Galactic has not yet set a firm timeline for carrying tourists into space, but pre-sale tickets for the trip cost $250,000 (£160,000) each.

Hundreds of people have already reserved a seat on the sub-orbital spaceplane, including celebrities like Ashton Kutcher, Leonardo DiCaprio, Angelina Jolie, and Justin Bieber. The VSS Unity will remain on the ground after its unveiling however, as it must go through "full-vehicle tests of her electrical systems and all of her moving parts," the company said on its website.

New SpaceShipTwo: Will you need to wear a space suit?

Virgin Galactic partnered with a high-end fashion brand known as Y-3 to ensure everyone aboard its space ships look mighty spiffy.

Y-3 is a collaboration between Adidas and Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto. It created sleek-looking apparel for future pilots, operations team members on the ground, and astronauts. The line features dark-coloured, lightweight material, with zippers going up the legs and torsos. Everything has a tight fit and is comfortable enough to support a natural seating position.

Want to know more?

Check out Virgin Galactic's blog posts (here and here) for more details.</s>A Virgin Galactic rocket plane reached space on Thursday and returned safely to the California desert, capping years of testing to become the first U.S. commercial human flight to breach Earth's atmosphere since America's shuttle program ended in 2011.

The successful test flight presages a new era of civilian space travel that could kick off as soon as next year, with Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic battling billionaire-backed ventures such as Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, to be the first to offer suborbital flights to fare-paying tourists.

Branson, who said he personally put up $1 billion toward the roughly $1.3 billion development costs for Virgin's space businesses, told Reuters he viewed competition with Bezos and others as a race, though passenger safety was the top priority.

"Today we get to enjoy the fact that we have put people into space before anybody else," Branson said.

Virgin's twin-fuselage carrier airplane holding the SpaceShipTwo passenger spacecraft took off at 7:11 a.m. local time (1511 GMT) from the Mojave Air and Space Port, about 90 miles (145 km) north of Los Angeles.

British billionaire Branson, wearing jeans and a leather bomber jacket with a fur collar, attended the take-off along with hundreds of spectators on a crisp morning in the California desert.

After the rocket plane, also called the VSS Unity, reached an apogee of 51.4 miles (83 km) above Earth, a crying Branson hugged his son and high-fived and hugged other spectators. The plane reentered the atmosphere at 2.5 times the speed of sound and landed a few minutes later to cheers and applause, concluding roughly an hour's journey.

One of the pilots handed Branson a small Earth stress ball when the two hugged.

Thursday's test flight - the fourth mission during which VSS Unity flew under its own power - had pilots Mark Stucky and Frederick Sturckow onboard, four NASA research payloads, and a mannequin named Annie as a stand-in passenger.

The next flight test is within the next couple of months, depending on data analysis from Thursday's flight, Virgin Galactic said. Branson has said Virgin's first commercial space trip with him onboard would happen "in months and not years."

The carrier airplane hauled the SpaceShipTwo passenger rocket plane to an altitude of about 45,000 feet (13.7 kms) and released it. Seconds later, SpaceShipTwo fired, catapulting it to more than 51 miles above Earth, high enough for the pilots to experience weightlessness and see the curvature of the planet.

The ship's rocket igniting and vertical ascent through a cloudless sky could be seen from the ground.

Virgin's latest flight test comes four years after the original SpaceShipTwo crashed during a test flight that killed the co-pilot and seriously injured the pilot, dealing a major setback to Virgin Galactic, a U.S. offshoot of the London-based Virgin Group.

"It's been 14 long years to get here," Branson told reporters after the landmark flight. "We've had tears, real tears, and we've had moments of joy. So the tears today were tears of joy."

Nearly 700 people have paid or put down deposits to fly aboard Virgin's suborbital missions, including actor Leonardo DiCaprio and pop star Justin Bieber. A 90-minute flight costs $250,000. Virgin Galactic has received about $80 million in deposits from future astronauts, Branson said.

Short sightseeing trips to space aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket are likely to cost around $200,000 to $300,000, at least to start, Reuters reported in July. Tickets will be offered ahead of the first commercial launch, and test flights with Blue Origin employees are expected to begin in 2019.

Branson added that he "would be delighted to offer Bezos a flight on Virgin" and for Bezos "to maybe offer me a flight" on New Shepard.

Bezos' New Shepard has already flown to the internationally recognised boundary between Earth's atmosphere and outer space known as the Karman line at 62 miles (100 km) - though the Blue Origin trip did not carry humans.

Virgin's Thursday launch did not go as high as the Karman line. Its pilots were aiming to soar 50 miles into the sky, which is the U.S. military and NASA's definition of the edge of space and high enough to earn commercial astronaut wings by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.

Other firms planning a variety of passenger spacecraft include Boeing Co, Elon Musk's SpaceX and late Microsoft Corp co-founder Paul Allen's Stratolaunch.

In September, SpaceX said Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, founder and chief executive of online fashion retailer Zozo, would be the company's first passenger on a voyage around the moon on its forthcoming Big Falcon Rocket spaceship, tentatively scheduled for 2023.

Musk, the billionaire CEO of electric carmaker Tesla Inc, said the Big Falcon Rocket could conduct its first orbital flights in two to three years as part of his grand plan to shuttle passengers to the moon and eventually fly humans and cargo to Mars.

Looking to the future after the successful flight, Branson talked about the possibility of using his space plane to link international cities, offering orbital space flights, or potentially even building a Virgin hotel in space.

"One thing leads onto another. I forever dream," he told Reuters. "Actually, I said to my son today, we were sitting in the cockpit (before the flight), and I said sometimes I think life is just one incredible dream."

Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Mojave, California; Additional reporting by Irene Klotz in Cape Canaveral, Florida; Writing by Nick Zieminski; Editing by Leslie Adler.</s>Rob is a Verdict staff writer. You can reach him at robert.scammell@verdict.co.uk

Yesterday Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic test flight successfully flew to the edge of space, marking a major milestone in the commercial space race.

It is the first time VSS Unity, a SpaceShipTwo-class suborbital rocket-powered space plane, surpassed the 80km altitude at which NASA awards astronaut wings.

According to Virgin Galactic, the space plane reached a maximum height of 82.7km, giving pilots Mark ‘Forger’ Stucky and C.J Stuckrow spectacular views of the curvature of Earth.

Jet-powered aircraft WhiteKnightTwo acted as a mothership, carrying VSS Unity to an altitude of more than 43,000ft before releasing it.

Pilots Stucky and Stuckrow then ignited VSS Unity’s rocket for 60 seconds, propelling it to a top speed of Mach 2.9 – nearly three times the speed of sound.

There is no agreed international law defining the edge of space, but 100km above sea level commonly represents the boundary between the Earth’s atmosphere and outer space. While VSS Unity did not pass this, previous Virgin Galactic model SpaceShipOne surpassed this in 2004.

It is a major success for Virgin Galactic after its previous SpaceShipTwo plane was destroyed during a test flight in 2014, resulting in the death of one of the craft’s two pilots.

You can watch the spectacular video of Virgin Galactic’s space flight below.

Video of Virgin Galactic space flight take off

WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo took off from the Mojave Desert in California yesterday at 10am EST.

Watch SpaceShipTwo return to Earth after the successful space flight

SpaceShipTwo also carried payloads for NASA experiments, which put the spaceship close to the full weight it would be operating at during commercial flights.

The spacecraft is fully reusable, with WhiteKnightTwo having now flown a total of 261 times and SpaceShipTwo 15 times.

Virgin Galactic says it has sold hundreds of tickets to customers priced at $250,000 a pop, but the company plans to carry out more testing before commercial flights take place.

Competitors SpaceX and Blue Origin have both sent rockets further into space, albeit without human passengers.

Read more: Commercial space race: How close are Virgin Galactic, SpaceX and Blue Origin to taking tourists to space?</s>If you would like to see more articles like this please support our coverage of the space program by becoming a Spaceflight Now Member . If everyone who enjoys our website helps fund it, we can expand and improve our coverage further.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Updated at 12 p.m. EST (1700 GMT) after confirmation of a successful test flight.

With two veteran test pilots at the controls, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane climbed to the edge of space for the first time Thursday in a major achievement for Richard Branson’s long-sought ambition to begin regular commercial hops with space tourists, and the first piloted flight by a U.S. vehicle above an altitude of 50 miles (80 kilometers) since the last space shuttle mission in 2011.

The successful test flight Thursday propelled Virgin Galactic — founded by Branson in 2004 — closer to commercial service after a 14-year effort slowed by development problems, and a fatal crash in 2014 that set the program back more than three years.

“Today, for the first time in history, a crewed spaceship, built to carry private passengers, reached space,” Branson said. “Today we completed our first revenue-generating flight and our pilots earned their commercial astronaut wings. Today, we have shown that Virgin Galactic really can open space to change the world for good.

“We will now push on with the remaining portion of our flight test program, which will see the rocket motor burn for longer and VSS Unity fly still faster and higher towards giving thousands of private astronauts an experience which provides a new, planetary perspective to our relationship with the Earth and the cosmos,” Branson continued. “This is a momentous day, and I could not be more proud of our teams who together have opened a new chapter of space exploration.”

The SpaceShipTwo vehicle, helmed by Virgin Galactic test pilots Mark “Forger” Stucky and Rick “C.J.” Sturckow, took off from the Mojave Air and Space Port around 10:10 a.m. EST (7:10 a.m. PST; 1510 GMT) Thursday under a specially-designed four-engine carrier jet.

The jet-powered mothership, named VMS Eve, took nearly an hour to climb to an altitude of 43,000 feet (about 13,100 meters) over the Mojave Desert, where it dropped the SpaceShipTwo vehicle, christened VSS Unity, at around 10:59 a.m. EST (7:59 a.m. PST; 1559 GMT). The rocket plane fell for a few seconds, then ignited its rear-mounted hybrid rocket motor for 60 seconds, propelling Stucky and Sturckow to a target altitude of more than 50 miles (80 kilometers).

Virgin Galactic live-tweeted Thursday’s flight, providing play-by-play updates as the suborbital spaceship rocketed through the rarefied upper atmosphere, then soared into the nearly airless environment of space. The company did not provide a live webcast of Thursday’s test flight.

VSS Unity reached a maximum altitude of 271,268 feet, or 82.7 kilometers, and a top speed of Mach 2.9 — nearly three times the speed of sound, according to Virgin Galactic.

In a press release Tuesday, Virgin Galactic — founded by billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson — said the company was entering a new phase of testing on SpaceShipTwo, an upsized commercial version of the SpaceShipOne rocket plane that won the Ansari X Prize in 2004, becoming the first privately-funded spacecraft to carry a human to space.

SpaceShipOne flew to an altitude of more than 62 miles (100 kilometers) on three occasions, first in June 2004, then on back-to-back quick-turnaround flights on Sept. 29 and Oct. 4, 2004.

“During this phase of the flight program we will be expanding the envelope for altitude, air speed, loads, and thermal heating,” Virgin Galactic said in a statement announcing plans for Thursday’s SpaceShipTwo test flight. “We also plan to burn the rocket motor for durations which will see our pilots and spaceship reach a space altitude for the first time.”

The reusable SpaceShipTwo rocket plane has a length of around 60 feet (18 meters), and a wingspan of 27 feet (8 meters). Once the rocket-powered portion of the flight was completed, and after a few minutes of weightlessness, Stucky and Sturckow steered the craft for a glide back to a runway landing at Mojave Air and Space Port, where VSS Unity touched down around 11:14 a.m. EST (8:14 a.m. PST; 1614 GMT).

“Many of you will know how important the dream of space travel is to me personally,” Branson said in remarks on the flight line at Mojave. “Ever since I watched the moon landings as a child, I have looked up to the skies with wonder. We started Virgin nearly 50 years ago dreaming big and loving a challenge. Today, as I stood among a truly remarkable group of people with our eyes on the stars, we saw our biggest dream and our toughest challenge to date fulfilled. It was an indescribable feeling: joy, relief, exhilaration and anticipation for what is yet to come.”

Stucky is a former U.S. Marine Corps and NASA test pilot, with more than 9,000 hours of flying time on a variety of aircraft, including the F-4, F-16 and F/A-18 fighter planes, along with a variant of the U-2 spy plane. Sturckow is a former NASA astronaut and a retired Marine Corps test pilot who flew on four space shuttle missions, and commanded two shuttle flights to assemble the International Space Station.

VSS Unity is the second SpaceShipTwo vehicle to be built, following the loss of the VSS Enterprise rocket plane in a fatal crash in 2014 that killed Michael Alsbury, the craft’s co-pilot. Lead pilot Peter Siebold parachuted back to the ground after a harrowing fall from the stratosphere when VSS Enterprise lost control and broke apart moments after igniting its rocket motor on an atmospheric test flight.

Engineers blamed pilot error for the accident, which occurred after Alsbury prematurely unlocked SpaceShipTwo’s feathering system, twin tail booms that are used to re-orient the rocket plane and slow it down for descent back into the dense, lower layers of the atmosphere. While the pilots did not command the feathering system to engage, the air flow at the ship’s altitude forced the booms to rotate toward their re-entry positions, leading to the craft’s disintegration at an altitude of more than 50,000 feet.

The new SpaceShipTwo models, beginning with VSS Unity, have an added safety feature to prevent pilots from unlocking the tail fins too early.

Virgin Galactic, through it subsidiary The Spaceship Company, took over development and construction of subsequent SpaceShipTwo vehicles from Scaled Composites after the crash. VSS Unity made its first captive carry test flight underneath the VMS Eve mothership in 2016, followed by a series of unpowered glide flights and three rocket-powered tests beginning in April, ahead of Thursday’s trip to the edge of space.

Once the test flight program is completed, Virgin Galactic plans to relocate operational SpaceShipTwo flights to Spaceport America facility in New Mexico. The SpaceShip company is building additional SpaceShipTwo vehicles to allow for a higher flight rate after commercial service begins. Virgin Galactic has not announced a timetable for the first flight with paying passengers, or when Branson himself plans to climb aboard VSS Unity for a spaceflight.

Here is a list of the VSS Unity’s powered test flights to date:
• May 29: Apogee of 114,500 feet (34.3 kilometers); Top speed of Mach 1.9

SpaceShipTwo is designed to carry six passengers, along with two pilots, close to the boundary of space. Commercial flights of the vehicle are expected to fly to an altitude of at least 50 miles (80 kilometers). The U.S. Air Force and NASA awarded astronaut wings to pilots of the X-15 rocket plane who traveled to that altitude, but the Kármán line — the internationally-recognized boundary of space — lies at the 62-mile (100-kilometer) mark.

But there has been a recent push to redefine the internationally-recognized boundary of space to the lower 80-kilometer mark, and the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, the world air sports governing body, announced Nov. 30 that it will reconsider the location of the boundary, which is useful for keeping scorecards and determining who and what vehicles have flown in space.

“In the last few years there have been many scientific and technical discussions around this demarcation line for the ‘edge of space’ and variance around this as a boundary condition for recognition of ‘astronaut’ status,” the FAI said in a statement.

“Recently published analyses present a compelling scientific case for reduction in this altitude from 100 kilometers to 80 kilometers,” the statement continued. “These analyses combine data/modeling from a number of differing perspectives (latitudinal variations during solar cycles, theoretical lift coefficients for different size/configuration satellites ranging from cubesats to the International Space Station, perigee/apogee elliptical analysis of actual satellite orbital lifetimes, etc.) to a level that has never been done before in relation to this issue.”

The Kármán line is named for Theodore von Kármán, a pioneer in theoretical aerodynamics who co-founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The recent analyses of the boundary of space “also provide an accurate overview of some of the historical arguments and inadvertent misrepresentations of Kármán’s actual analyses and conclusions from over half a century ago,” the FAI statement continued.

The air sports governing body said it would organize a workshop with the International Astronautical Federation in 2019 to “fully explore this issue with input and participation from the astrodynamics and astronautical community.”

Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astropyhsics who tracks rocket launches, is a proponent of changing the internationally-recognized threshold of space to the 80-kilometer altitude. McDowell tweeted after Thursday’s SpaceShipTwo flight that he plans to include the rocket plane’s first mission to space on his widely-referenced list of human spaceflights.

“Stucky is the 568th human to fly above 80 km,” he tweeted, a list that includes professional astronauts and pilots of the X-15 rocket plane, which flew above the 80-kilometer mark in the 1960s. The Federal Aviation Administration is expected to award Stucky and Sturckow commercial astronaut wings after Thursday’s flight, joining SpaceShipOne pilots Mike Melvill and Brian Binnie as the only pilots to achieve that distinction.

Sturckow already flew above the 80-kilometer altitude on his four space shuttle missions.

Four NASA-supported science experiments rode aboard SpaceShipTwo on Thursday, making it Virgin Galactic’s first revenue-generating flight.

“The anticipated addition of SpaceShipTwo to a growing list of commercial vehicles supporting suborbital research is exciting,” said Ryan Dibley, Flight Opportunities campaign manager at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. “Inexpensive access to suborbital space greatly benefits the technology research and broader spaceflight communities.”

The experiments flown Thursday included investigations studying the behavior of dust particles on low-gravity planetary surfaces and the response of plant tissue to microgravity. NASA also flew a demo payload to test fluid flow control technologies that could be used on thermal control and life support systems on future spacecraft, and a vibration isolation mounting interface designed to reduce disturbances during launch, re-entry and landing.

Virgin Galactic is competing with Blue Origin, founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, in the suborbital space tourism and research market. While Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo vehicle uses an airborne release to fire into space and lands on a runway under manual pilot control, Blue Origin’s fully-automated New Shepard rocket and crew capsule takes off vertically from a launch pad, followed by a propulsive landing of the booster and a parachute-assisted return of the passenger-carrying module.

Blue Origin has accomplished nine New Shepard flights since 2015 — all without passengers — including two in-flight tests of the rocket’s abort system, which could be activated to rapidly push the crew capsule away from a failing booster. The highest altitude achieved by a New Shepard flight to date is nearly 390,000 feet — almost 119 kilometers — thanks to an extra burst of energy provided by the capsule’s abort rocket during an escape test in July.

Following a standard mission profile, the New Shepard has reached a maximum height of around 351,000 feet, or 107 kilometers.

Several hundred would-be space tourists have paid deposits on $250,000 tickets to ride Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo. Blue Origin has not yet started selling tickets for New Shepard.

While Thursday’s flight was the first time a piloted U.S. vehicle has reached the 80-kilometer mark since the last space shuttle mission in July 2011, work continues in preparation for the first flight of an orbital-class U.S. crewed spacecraft. SpaceX and Boeing, each working under multibillion-dollar contracts with NASA, are developing human-rated capsules that could be ready to carry astronauts to the International Space Station next year.</s>Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo flew higher than it ever has before, surpassing what the US Air Force considers the boundary of space, and marking the first manned flight to space from US soil since 2011.

The United States has not sent any people to space since the US space shuttle program ended in 2011, and has relied on Russian Soyuz rockets to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station.

In the meantime, a commercial space race is underway as companies rush to build spacecraft that can carry astronauts and tourists into microgravity.

Virgin Galactic marked a major milestone on Thursday in that race, as its spaceship made it to a peak height, or apogee, of 51.4 miles (82.7 kilometers), after taking off attached to an airplane from Mojave, California, then firing its rocket motors to reach new heights.

"We made it to space," the company said on Twitter.

"We travelled at 2.9 Mach on the way up to today. That's 2.9 times the speed of sound."

The flight -- with two pilots on board -- was a major victory for the company headed by British tycoon Richard Branson, who is striving to send tourists to space at a cost of $250,000 per seat.

The commonly accepted international definition of space is 62 miles high (100 kilometers), but the US Air Force considers the space boundary to be a bit lower, at 50 miles.

Virgin Galactic has said it would use the US Air Force's definition of space as its standard.

In July, after burning the rocket motor for 42 seconds, the VSS Unity reached a height of 32 miles.

Commercial airplanes typically fly at an altitude of about six miles, while the orbiting International Space Station is some 250 miles high.

Another US rocket company, Blue Origin, founded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, is also working to send tourists to space, but using a small rocket to get there.

Virgin's first flight date had been pushed back multiple times, following a test flight accident that killed a co-pilot in 2014.

Branson told CNN in November he hoped to send people to space "before Christmas."

More than 600 clients have already paid $250,000 for a ticket.
Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo successfully completes its fourth powered test flight with VSS Unity and reaches space at an altitude of 82.7 km (51.4 mi) but does not breach the 100 km (62 mi) Karman Line.