British billionaire and Virgin Group founder Richard Branson made history on Sunday. He returned from a 60-minute spaceflight on a Virgin Galactic rocket plane. Along with the landing, he described his experience as memorable. Branson said, 'It's a memorable experience of life. Congratulations to our wonderful team working at Virgin Galactic for 17 years. It was only because of his hard work for such a long time that we could reach here.
Aboard Virgin Galactic's passenger rocket plane VSS Unity, Branson traveled to the edge of space and experienced weightlessness. The plane took off from New Mexico at around 8.10 pm (Indian time). Virgin Group had told on its official social media account that it was to take off at 6.30 pm, but due to bad weather, the launch time was extended by one and a half hours.
According to the scheduled program, Richard Branson's space journey was to last 150 minutes, but he returned after completing his journey in 60 minutes i.e. an hour. No information has been given by Virgin Group or Branson about the reason for this change in travel times.
Before the flight, Branson said that my mission statement is to make the dream of space travel come true for my grandchildren, your grandchildren and everyone. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has also reached to see his journey. His company SpaceX is also trying to become a big player in space tourism.
Branson said he wants to experience it himself before starting the commercial tour next year. After the flight was successful, his company Virgin crossed the biggest milestone towards starting a commercial tour to space.
Richard is associated with Spaceship-2 Unity as a mission specialist. 5 more people including India's Sirisha Bandla flew with them. Sirisha has become the second Indian-born woman after Kalpana Chawla to go into space after this mission. Sirisha, 34, is an aeronautical engineer.
When: July 11, Sunday
Timings: 8.10 PM (Indian Time)
Where: Spaceport America, New Mexico
Flight Duration: 1 hour
How high: 90-100 km
This was the 22nd flight of VSS Unity, but it is not part of any rocket. It took off from Spaceport America aboard the company's plane VMS Eve. According to the procedure, after going up about 15 km, the Unity spacecraft separated and its rocket engine reached a speed of Mach-3 (ie 3704.4 km / h).
After this VSS Unity went to an altitude of about 90-100 km with its rocket. At that time the other passengers, including Branson, felt weightless for about 3 minutes. From here the earth appears round, that is, its curvature is visible. After this, it returned to Earth and landed on the runway of the spaceport.
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