WASHINGTON: Virgin Galactic launched its first tourist passengers into the weightlessness of space on Thursday, the culmination of a nearly two-decade commercial pursuit, the company said.

The three passengers — Jon Goodwin, Keisha Schahaff, and her teenage daughter Anastatia Mayers — floated gravity-free through the Virgin spacecraft about 45 minutes after taking off.

“They are officially astronauts. Welcome to space,” said Virgin Galactic announcer Sirisha Bandla as the spacecraft pushed above 80 kilometres in altitude, the level marking the edge of space where the pull of gravity is minimal.

Live video showed the three admiring views of the Earth below and further into space through the windows.

Virgin Galactic’s spaceflights involve a giant, twin-fuselage carrier aircraft that takes off from a runway, gains altitude, then drops a rocket-powered spaceplane that soars into space.

After a few minutes in space, the craft began descending and safely landed in the US state of New Mexico, at the same runway they took off from.

Goodwin, 80, an adventurer who competed in the 1972 Olympic games as a canoeist for Britain, became Virgin Galactic’s first paying space tourist who won their tickets in a charity sweepstakes.

He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2014 and will be the second person with the condition to travel to space.

Schahaff is a 46-year-old health coach from Antigua and Barbuda, while her daughter Mayers, 18, is a student at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, studying philosophy and physics.

They won their tickets in a sweepstakes tickets that raised $1.7 million for the non-profit Space for Humanity, which aims to widen space access.

Published in Dawn, August 11th, 2023