Humans have finally gone to space! Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity was tasked with carrying the first tourists into space, and the team recently successfully landed there. A rocket-powered space plane was used for this trip.
The mission, known as Galactic 02, lifted off from Spaceport America in New Mexico shortly after 11 a.m. ET. There were six people on board the plane, including flight commander and former NASA astronaut CJ Sturckow, pilot Kelly Latimer and Virgin Galactic’s chief astronaut instructor Beth Moses, who trained the crew before the flight.
The plane was also carrying three private passengers, including health and wellness trainer Keisha Schahaff and her 18-year-old daughter Anastasia Mayers.
According to reports, Schahaff managed to get a place in a fundraising competition organized by Space for Humanity, a non-profit organization that seeks to democratize space travel. As for Mayers, she studied philosophy and physics at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. Interestingly, Schahaff and Mayers are the first mother and daughter to enter space together.
The mission also marks the most number of women flying in a single mission to space. The plane also carried former Olympian Jon Goodwin, who competed in the 1972 Olympics in Munich as a canoeist. It is another interesting fact to know that at the age of 80, Goodwin was the second person with Parkinson’s disease and the first Olympian to start a spacewalk.
Referring to this special journey, he said that when he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2014, he was determined not to let it get in the way of a full life. He also added that to go to space with Parkinson’s is completely magical.
As for the spacecraft, Galactic 02 is a suborbital and although VSS Unity does not reach orbit, the trajectory allows passengers to experience several units of weightlessness and altitude that they have ability to see the rotation of the Earth.
If you watch live footage on the plane, you will see that the passengers from their seats are watching the Earth through the window while they floated in the spacecraft.
