Virgin Galactic spaceship carrying Branson touches down

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Virgin Galactic spaceship carrying Branson touches down
by Staff Writers
Spaceport America, United States (AFP) Jul 11, 2021

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A Virgin Galactic spaceship carrying Richard Branson touched down Sunday after a voyage the British billionaire called an "experience of a lifetime."

"Congratulations to all our wonderful team at Virgin Galactic for 17 years of hard hard work to get us this far," he said during a live feed as the VSS Unity spaceship glided back to Spaceport America in New Mexico.

It reached a peak altitude of around 53 miles (85 kilometers), beyond the boundary of space according to the United States, allowing the passengers to experience weightlessness and admire the Earth's curvature.

Touch down occurred around 09:40 am Mountain Time (1540 GMT), about an hour after take-off.

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British billionaire Branson takes off for space
Spaceport America, United States (AFP) July 11, 2021
Billionaire Richard Branson took off Sunday from a base in New Mexico aboard a Virgin Galactic vessel bound for the edge of space, a voyage he hopes will lift the nascent space tourism industry off the ground. A massive carrier plane made a horizontal take-off from Spaceport, New Mexico at around 8:40 am Mountain Time (1440 GMT) and will ascend for around an hour to an altitude of 50,000 feet (15 kilometers). The mothership will then drop a rocket-powered spaceplane called VSS Unity, which will ... read more

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