The spectacle also served as a highly public milestone in the push to commercialize access to suborbital space, for pleasure and for profit. The mission, called Unity 22, marks the largest crew that Branson’s company Virgin Galactic has ever flown to the edge of space. “It’s the complete experience of a lifetime,” a jubilant Branson said as V.S.S. Unity glided down to a landing strip back in New Mexico and rolled to a stop. Fifteen minutes after separating from the mothership, V.S.S. As it completed its ascent, it rotated its twin tail booms, reconfiguring the vehicle to allow it to slowly fall through the upper atmosphere like a badminton shuttlecock. Unity-launched mid-air from a larger carrier aircraft to reach more than 53 miles skyward. That gleaming craft-Virgin Galactic’s V.S.S. A few minutes later, the craft’s two pilots and four passengers, including billionaire Richard Branson, floated more than 53 miles above our planet’s surface: high enough to see Earth’s curvature and to slip the bonds of gravity, for a few minutes at least. More than 46,000 feet above the stark New Mexico desert, a white and silver space plane rocketed toward the edge of Earth’s atmosphere, riding on a fiery plume of burning laughing gas and solid rubber fuel.

Virgin galactic spaceship