Virgin Galactic’s first-ever 90-minute commercial space flight went off without a hitch Thursday — leading to a sigh of relief following the recent Titan tragedy.
The Richard Branson-owned space tourism company successfully launched a team of Italian researchers into orbit, where they spent a few minutes weightless as the aircraft straddled the edge of the stratosphere.
The Italian scientists gave each other first bumps while hooting and hollering in celebration after the “mother ship” reached an apex of 53 miles, or 279,000 feet, above the surface of the Earth.
Col. Walter Villadei, a space engineer with the Italian Air Force, celebrated by unfolding an Italian flag while weightless.
“Che volo fantastico! An historic moment – @virgingalactic’s first commercial spaceflight completed. Ben fatto,” Branson tweeted after the craft’s safe return — which translates into “What a fantastic flight” and “Well done.”
The cheers helped calm many on social media who were concerned by another extreme expedition so soon after the implosion of the Titan submersible killed five people bound for the wreckage site of the Titanic at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
On Thursday, the Virgin Galactic aircraft, the VMS Eve, took off from an air field in New Mexico at 10:45 a.m. Eastern time.
The hour-and-a-half flight, which was live streamed by the company, carried two Italian air force officers an engineer with Italy’s National Research Council, and two Virgin Galactic pilots.
The researchers were given a free ride — instead of having to the $200,000 per seat ticket price — to conduct a series of microgravity experiments during their few minutes of weightless.
Virgin Galactic will now begin offering monthly flights next month, according to the company, which has a backlog of passengers that have been waiting years to teeter on the edge of space.
Thus far, Virgin Galactic has sold 800 tickets, with the price now surging to $450,000 per seat.
The Italian research flight was initially scheduled for the fall of 2021 but Virgin Galactic at the time said it was forced to push back its timeline due to a potential defect in a component used in its flight control system.
Then the company spent months upgrading its rocket ship before resuming testing in early 2023.
Last month, Virgin Galactic conducted its final test flight in which it reached an altitude of 54.2 miles before gliding back down to the runway at the southern New Mexico airstrip.
Branson, the Virgin mogul whose net worth was pegged by Forbes at around $3 billion, beat rival billionaire Jeff Bezos into space two years ago, when he boarded his own company’s winged rocket ship alongside five crewmates.
Bezos, the Amazon founder who left his chief executive position to concentrate on his Blue Origin space tourism company, flew into space nine days later.
Blue Origin has since launched several passenger trips.
Virgin Galactic has reached space six times since 2018 and will be aiming for 400 flights per year from Spaceport America once it finishes building its next class of rocket-powered planes at a facility in neighboring Arizona.
In May 2020, SpaceX, which is owned by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, became the first private company to send astronauts to the International Space Station.
SpaceX, which has partnered with NASA, has sold multi-day suborbital trips at a cost of $55 million per ticket.
With Post Wires
This story originally appeared on NYPost
