Virgin Galactic, the historic suborbital flight with the first space tourists

The second suborbital flight of Virgin Galactic has successfully concluded: the VSS Unity shuttle, which carried the first Olympic athlete and the first mother-daughter couple, landed at the America spaceport in New Mexico at 5.38 pm Italian time. After take-off, carried out thanks to the mother plane VMS Eve co-piloted by the Italian Nicola Pecile, the actual Galactic-02 mission began at 17.22, when the shuttle was released at an altitude of 15,000 meters and fired its engine to reach suborbital space. This second mission involved six people in all: in addition to Commander CJ Sturckow, a former NASA astronaut, and pilot Kelly Latimer, the first woman to serve as a research pilot at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center and her first suborbital flight, there were also three private passengers, the first suborbital “tourists” with Virgin Galactic. Jon Goodwin, who competed as a canoeist in the 1972 Munich Olympics, now 80, is the first Olympic athlete among space tourists. With him Keisha Schahaff and her daughter Anastatia Mayers, 18 years old, who were lucky enough to win their place thanks to a competition organized by Space for Humanity. Rounding out the crew was Beth Moses, the Virgin Galactic instructor who trained the trio for the flight, and who had already become the first woman to fly aboard the VSS Unity.