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The world's first ever commercial passenger spaceship made its inaugural test flight over the California desert yesterday attached to the wing of its mothership. The flight marked the start of a test programme for Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo that will progress to free flights as a glider and then under rocket power, Sir Richard Branson's company said in a statement.
Throughout the two-hour, 54-minute test, the spaceship remained slung beneath the middle of the wing of its unique twin-fuselage carrier aircraft, the WhiteKnightTwo. The pair achieved an altitude of 45,000ft before returning to the Mojave Air and Space Port, which is 70 miles north of Los Angeles, the company said.
'This is a momentous day,' designer Burt Rutan said.
The rocket and mothership are the second generation of the Rutan-designed system that sent the first privately developed, manned rocket into space in June 2004. SpaceShipOne went on that year to make two more suborbital flights, winning the $10million Ansari X Prize.
Sir Richard is in a deal with the Rutan-founded Scaled Composites of Mojave, California, to develop passenger-carrying spacecraft and launchers.
The new SpaceShipTwo has been dubbed Virgin Spaceship Enterprise and the four-engine carrier jet is called Virgin Mothership Eve, after Sir Richard's mother.
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