Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic rocket plane is back in action after a gap of almost two years.
The Unity vehicle, with two pilots and four passengers aboard, climbed high over the New Mexico desert to the edge of space – before gliding back down.
It was billed as the plane’s final test outing before entering commercial service in June.
Galactic has sold over 800 tickets to individuals who want to ride more than 80km (260,000ft) above Earth.
The company expects to start working through this passenger list with Unity flights initially occurring at the rate of one a month. New rocket planes are being designed for service in 2026 that should each be capable of increasing the cadence to one a week.
Thursday’s mission came just a couple of days after winning bids were announced to buy the assets in Sir Richard’s other space firm, Virgin Orbit, which filed papers with a bankruptcy court in April.
This business failed following an unsuccessful attempt to launch satellites to space from the UK in January.
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