Today a new step into spaceflight has been taken by VirginGalactic from their Spacebase in New Mexico ‘Spaceport America’ when ‘Unity22’ took to space with a full mission crew containing their founder Sir Richard Branson.

The Mission Specialists on this flight were:

• Beth Moses, Chief Astronaut Instructor at Virgin Galactic. Moses will serve as cabin lead and test director in space, overseeing the safe and efficient execution of the test flight objectives.
• Colin Bennett, Lead Operations Engineer at Virgin Galactic. Bennett will evaluate cabin equipment, procedures, and experience during both the boost phase and in the weightless environment.
• Sirisha Bandla, Vice President of Government Affairs and Research Operations at Virgin Galactic. Bandla will be evaluating the human-tended research experience, using an experiment from the University of Florida that requires several handheld fixation tubes that will be activated at various points in the flight profile.
• Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic. Branson will evaluate the private astronaut experience and will undergo the same training, preparation and flight as Virgin Galactic’s future astronauts. The Company will use his observations from his flight training and spaceflight experience to enhance the journey for all future astronaut customers.

This first full flight of VirginGalactic will open up space for more people than ever before in a most comfortable way. During the next period more people will be able to afford a ticket to space.

Impression of the first flight in photo’s: