Seventeen years after Sir Richard Branson watched SpaceShipOne win the Ansari X-Prize, the English entrepreneur and billionaire has flown aboard a successor vehicle known as SpaceShipTwo as part of a crew of six people, the others being Virgin Galactic employees, in a suborbital flight to space.
The flight, known as the Unity 22 Mission, occurred on Sunday July 11 from Spaceport America near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. The SpaceShipTwo vehicle, VSS Unity, was slung under the purpose-built mothership aircraft known as WhiteKnightTwo or VMS Eve, which took off from the Spaceport America’s 12,000 foot long runway at 8:40 AM MDT (14:40 UTC) before climbing to the release altitude for the flight.