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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
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.