Virgin Galactic has celebrated another successful suborbital test flight and the first time it has carried a passenger.
The passenger was Virgin Galactic’s chief astronaut instructor Beth Moses who was onboard to record more data about how the human body reacts to space flight on the VSS Unity spacecraft.
It reached its highest altitude yet on the February 22 test flight at 55.9 miles above the earth.
That wasn’t quite into orbit but beyond the FAA’s official definition of space.
It reached a top speed of Mach 3.0.
Virgin Galactic plans to take space tourists on suborbital flights for a price of $250,000 each.
Sir Richard Branson has pledged to become the first paying passenger later this year for a flight that will coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing.
Virgin hopes to start scheduled space flights in 2020.
