Virgin Galactic aces first commercial space flight service on Thursday

San Francisco, June 16

Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic has successfully completed its long-awaited first commercial spaceflight, called “Galactic 01,” on Thursday

“Welcome back to Earth, Galactic01! Our pilots, crew and spaceship have landed smoothly at Spaceport America,” the company shared on Twitter.

Galactic 01, carrying four passengers and two pilots lifted off from Spaceport America in New Mexico after 11.00 a.m. EDT (8.30 p.m. IST) on June 29. The crew include Virgin Galactic's astronaut Colin Bennett and Col. Walter Villadei and Lt. Col. Angelo Landolfi from the Italian Air Force and Pantaleone Carlucci, the nation's National Research Council engineer who will collect data for a number of scientific investigations during their flight.

The two VSS Unity pilots are Mike Masucci and Nicola Pecile, and two pilots for VMS Eve.

After reaching around 50,000 feet of altitude, VMS Eve dropped VSS Unity for the spaceplane to blast its way to suborbital space, allowing passengers to experience a few moments of weightlessness.

Virgin Galactic’s start to commercial service comes after years of delays and setbacks. The success of “Galactic 01” will pave the way for the company’s second mission slated for August and then to once a month.

It will showcase the unique suborbital science lab that Virgin Galactic offers as well as help the company to use the experience as training for potential future missions to the International Space Station.

Virgin Galactic is now among aerospace companies, along with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, that can ferry paying customers to space.

Galactic 01 also carried 13 experiments for collecting medical and cosmic radiation data and studying fluid dynamics.

“Today's #Galactic01 mission will fly 13 autonomous and human-tended experiments which examine biomedicine thermo-fluid dynamics, and the development of innovative and sustainable materials in microgravity experiments,” the company shared earlier on Twitter.

"Virgin Galactic's research missions will usher in a new era of repeatable and reliable access to space for government and research institutions for years to come," said Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier in a statement.

The last Virgin Galactic spaceflight took place in July 2021 and had Virgin CEO Richard Branson, along with three other employees, on board. About 800 tickets have been sold over the past decade, with the initial batch going for $200,000 each.

Tickets now cost $450,000 per person.