[

British billionaire Richard Branson completed his latest, and arguably greatest, adventure Sunday with a brief flight to the edge of space aboard his Virgin Galactic space plane. The flight marks not only Branson’s first trip to space, but the first time Virgin has flown a full crew cabin as well.

Hundreds of invited guests and members of the media watched from the desert floor below at New Mexico’s Spaceport America as the double contrail drawn across the sky by carrier aircraft VMS Eve was suddenly overshadowed by a third white plume emanating from SpaceShipTwo Unity’s rocket engine. The pair lifted off together around 8:40 a.m. MT (7:40 a.m. PT) and 45 minutes later Unity detached from Eve and fired its motor for just under a minute to reach speeds in excess of Mach 3.

Now playing:
Watch this:

Watch Virgin Galactic launch Richard Branson to space…

11:36

Viewed from the surface, a diffuse but distinct white line could be seen rapidly painting almost perfectly vertically, pointing quite literally to the heavens.

Branson called it the “experience of a lifetime” in a staticky radio transmission from Unity as it began to glide back to Earth. The craft then returned for a picture-perfect landing near the same spot VMS Eve launched from almost exactly an hour earlier. “Welcome to the dawn of a new space age,” the 70-year-old Branson said later from the tarmac of Spaceport America. 

VMS Eve is named for Branson’s mother, Eve, who died due to COVID-19 complications in January.

“She held on for one last victory, managing to fight off the virus, but had expended all of her energy in the process,” Branson wrote in a blog post citing her as a major inspiration and force behind his career. “She took glider lessons disguised as a boy, enlisted in the WRENS (Women’s Royal Naval Service) during World War II … she was inventive, fearless, relentless — an entrepreneur before the word existed.”

From the lab to your inbox. Get the latest science stories from EDLevery week.

Unity made it to an estimated altitude of about 53 miles (86 kilometers) above the surface of the Earth. Some will quibble that this is lower than the commonly accepted definition of space, which begins at a nice, even 100 kilometers (62 miles). However, the US military and NASA set the dividing line at 50 miles up (80 kilometers), so it’s all clearly a little subjective. And for the purposes of space tourism, you get to experience weightlessness and look down on our home planet set against the black void of space from either altitude.

Before taking off, Branson said he would be “looking back at our beautiful Earth and taking it all in and realizing that only 500 other people [actually it’s 570, as of Saturday] ellos han hecho esto. ”

También en el vuelo estaba la instructora principal de astronautas de Virgin, Beth Moses, la única persona que había volado previamente en la cabina de pasajeros de SpaceShipTwo, en 2019.El ingeniero de operaciones jefe de la compañía, Colin Bennett, estaba a bordo junto con Sirisha Bandla, vicepresidenta de Asuntos Gubernamentales. . Bandla realizó un experimento de investigación de la Universidad de Florida sobre la adaptación de la biología vegetal a la microgravedad.

Richard Branson y Virgin Galactic: vea cómo el sueño espacial se hace realidad

Ver todas las fotos

“Los vuelos VG ofrecen, por primera vez, la capacidad de monitorear activamente los experimentos durante el lanzamiento y la entrada inicial al espacio. Esta capacidad de estudiar la biología que experimenta el lanzamiento y luego la microgravedad es, quizás sorprendentemente, un nuevo desarrollo radical ”, dijo Rob Ferl, investigador principal del experimento y profesor de ciencias hortícolas, en un comunicado. “Anteriormente, todos los experimentos tenían que esperar hasta que la nave espacial estuviera en órbita antes de poder monitorear el experimento”.

Los dos pilotos de Virgin Galactic en Unity fueron Dave Mackay y Michael Masucci, con el ex astronauta de la NASA CJ Sturckow y el ex piloto de investigación de la NASA Kelly Latimer volando VMS Eve.

Branson siempre ha sido un aventurero y un buscador de emociones. Sus muchas aventuras incluyen paseos en globo aerostático de larga distancia y veleros transatlánticos. Es la persona de mayor edad en hacer kitesurf a través del Canal de la Mancha.

Una vez de regreso en el continente, Branson anunció que Virgin regalaría dos asientos en un próximo vuelo a través de un concurso de Omaze que también fomenta las donaciones para beneficiar a la organización sin fines de lucro Space for Humanity, que dice que su objetivo es “Democratizar el espacio y desarrollar soluciones a los problemas mundiales. a través del aumento de la conciencia humana “.

Puede volver a ver la transmisión en vivo del vuelo de Virgin Galactic a continuación.

Seguir Calendario espacial CNET 2021 para mantenerse al día con las últimas novedades espaciales de este año. Incluso puede agregarlo a su propio Calendario de Google.