Virgin Galactic Completes First Commercial Space Flight

American spaceflight company, Virgin Galactic, has successfully flown its first set of paying customers to the edge of space in its inaugural commercial flight.

The company, founded by billionaire businessman Richard Branson, completed the feat on Thursday, CNN reports.

The flight was a research-focused mission with four Italian Air Force-funded passengers, Col. Walter Villadei; Lt. Col. Angelo Landolfi, a physician who has trained as a crew surgeon for Russian cosmonauts; Pantaleone Carlucci, an engineer with Italy’s National Research Council; and Colin Bennett, a Virgin Galactic astronaut instructor.

The group’s journey played out in several stages. It began at Virgin Galactic’s spaceport in New Mexico, where the passengers boarded VSS Unity as it sat attached beneath the wing of a massive twin-fuselage mothership, an aircraft called VMS Eve.

VMS Eve took off much like an airplane, barreling down a runway before it ascended to more than 40,000 feet (12,192 meters). After reaching its designated altitude, VMS Eve released the VSS Unity, which then fired its rocket engine for about one minute as it swooped directly upward, sending it vaulting toward the stars.

The vehicle ventured more than 50 miles (80 kilometers) above Earth’s surface, the altitude that the United States government considers the edge of outer space. (Internationally, the Kármán line, located 62 miles (100 kilometers) above sea level, is often used to mark the boundary between our planet and space).

The space plane reached supersonic speeds as it hurled upward. And at the peak of its flight, the vehicle spent a few minutes in weightlessness as it entered freefall and glided back to the spaceport for a runway landing. The entire journey lasted about an hour and a half.

Founded in 2004, Virgin Galactic has sold around 800 tickets for seats on future commercial flights — 600 between 2005 and 2014 for $200,000 to $250,000; and 200 since then for $450,000 each.

Movie stars and celebrities were among the first to purchase seats, but the company’s program suffered a disaster in 2014 when a spaceplane on a test flight broke apart midair, killing the copilot and seriously injuring the pilot.

The company has however out its past behind and is focusing on the future as its next mission, Galactic 02, is set for August, and from then, it hopes to make monthly space flights after that.