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Richard Branson, crew launches into space on Virgin Galactic spaceship
![Richard Branson, crew launches into space on Virgin Galactic spaceship]()
Dave Mackay, chief pilot; Colin Bennett, lead operations engineer; Beth Moses, chief astronaut instructor;Richard Branson, founder Virgin Galactic; Sirisha Bandla, vice president of government affairs and research operations; Michael Masucci, pilot. (Source: Virgin Galactic) Richard Branson, crew launches into space on Virgin Galactic spaceship
Billionaire Sir Richard Bransonlaunched to the edge of space Sunday in the first fully crewed flight from his private space tourism firm Virgin Galactic.
The so-called Unity 22 mission lifted off from New Mexico about 10:38 a.m. Eastern Time attached to its "mothership" aircraft VMS Eve and just after 11 a.m. reached an altitude of 46,000 feet, which is higher than commercial airlines fly.
Branson, 70, is serving as a mission specialist on the flight, the fourth crewed spaceflight for Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity spacecraft. Unity was launched from the Eve mothership at an altitude of 50,000 feet and live stream video showed it shooting into space. Within 30 seconds the spacecraft reached mach 2 speed and a few seconds later hit mach 3 at an altitude of weightlessness.
Onboard video showed Branson and the three other astronauts smiling as a they looked out the windows of the spacecraft.
At around 11:40 a.m. ET the spacecraft touched back down on Earth.
