‘Welcome to space’: Virgin rocket in world first

Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic has successfully launched a tourism rocket plane into space for the first time.

Spaceshiptwo, VSS Unity, took off in the early morning sunshine at the Mojave test centre in California yesterday in front of hundreds of employees and their family members.

The aircraft hit an altitude of 271,268ft after being released by its carrier plane at 43,000ft.

It reached a top speed of 2.9 times the speed of sound.

Hundreds watched the space tourism plane take off at 7:10am local time and successfully land back at the test centre, which Sir Richard described as “a relief”.

It had reached space altitudes around 50 minutes after take-off, which the company’s Twitter account acknowledged with a tweet that read: “Spaceshiptwo, welcome to space.”

The billionaire businessman made reference to those who had sacrificed their lives for the Virgin Galactic cause such as the co-pilot who had died after a crash in 2014.

Flown by two pilots, mark Stucky and Nasa astronaut Frederick Sturckow, the aircraft made its rapid ascent as the rocket motor burned for 60 seconds.

Speaking to the crowd after the successful launch, Sir Richard said: “Who shed a tear here? I was shedding lots.

“Today for the first time in history a crewed spaceship, built to carry private passengers, reached space … Virgin Galactic really can open space to change the world for good.”