8/15/2023 0 Comments Person finds ancient space ship![]() Credit: AP Photo/Andres Leightonīut NASA, the Air Force, the Federal Aviation Administration and some astrophysicists consider the boundary between the atmosphere and space to begin 50 miles (80 kilometers) up. The rocket plane carrying Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson and other crew members takes off from Spaceport America near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, Sunday, July 11, 2021. "I'm just so delighted at what this open door is going to lead to now. "That was an amazing accomplishment," former Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, a one-time commander of the International Space Station, said from the sidelines. Mike Moses, a top executive at Virgin Galactic, said that apart from some problems with the transmission of video images from inside the cabin, the flight was perfect, and the ship looked pristine. Branson pumped his fists as he stepped out onto the runway and ran toward his family, bear-hugging his wife and children and scooping up his grandchildren in his arms. ![]() Spectators cheered, jumped into the air and embraced as the rocket plane touched down on Earth. Then, at an altitude of about 8 1/2 miles (13 kilometers), Unity detached from the mother ship and fired its engine, reaching more than Mach 3, or three times the speed of sound, as it pierced the edge of space. With about 500 people watching, including Branson's family, Unity was carried aloft underneath a twin-fuselage aircraft. Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson carries crew member Sirisha Bandla on his shoulders while celebrating their flight to space at Spaceport America near Truth or Consequences, N.M., Sunday, July 11, 2021. Astronaut John Glenn flew on the shuttle at age 77 in 1998.īezos sent his congratulations, adding: "Can't wait to join the club!"-though he also took to Twitter a couple of days earlier to enumerate the ways in which be believes his company's tourist rides will be better. He also became the second septuagenarian to go into space. spaceflight in 1961-was a splashy and unabashedly commercial plug for Virgin Galactic, which plans to start taking paying customers on joyrides next year.īranson became the first person to blast off in his own spaceship, beating Bezos, the richest person on the planet, by nine days. The brief, up-and-down flight-the space plane's portion took only about 15 minutes, or about as long as Alan Shepard's first U.S. "The whole thing, it was just magical," a jubilant Branson said on his return aboard the gleaming white space plane, named Unity. ![]() The nearly 71-year-old Branson and five crewmates from his Virgin Galactic space-tourism company reached an altitude of 53.5 miles (86 kilometers) over the New Mexico desert-enough to experience three to four minutes of weightlessness and witness the curvature of the Earth-and then glided back home to a runway landing.
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