Virgin Galactic will launch first commercial flight on Thursday

Two Italian air force colonels and an aerospace engineer from the National Research Council of Italy will fly to the edge of space Thursday, if all goes as planned. The flight, called Galactic 01, is the first commercial spaceflight for Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic space company. 

The trio will join one of Virgin Galactic’s astronaut instructors and two pilots, who will take them to 50 miles above the Earth. The launch is set for 11 a.m. ET.

Branson founded Virgin Galactic in 2004 as a space tourism company, aiming to ferry wealthy passengers to the edge of space and back. Thursday’s flight comes two years after Branson and the first passengers flew on the spaceplane. 

Commercial service was to begin shortly thereafter but was delayed when the company was grounded for deviating from its assigned airspace on that first mission. Following an investigation, the company was allowed to continue preparations for commercial flight. It completed one additional crewed flight in May before this latest mission. 

Virgin Galactic has said it has a backlog of nearly 800 customers waiting for their ride to space, and if all goes well on this mission, the next one could take place as soon as August. 

To get to space, passengers board a space plane called Unity, which is attached to a larger plane called the WhiteKnightTwo. The carrier plane takes off from the company’s facilities in New Mexico and, once it reaches a certain altitude, the Unity spaceplane drops and will ignite its rocket motor that will enable its pilots to reach the edge of space. 

The entire flight should take about 90 minutes, with the crew experiencing just a few minutes of weightlessness while enjoying stunning views of the blackness of space. During that time, the crew will conduct several science experiments before the craft heads back to Earth, where it will land like a glider back in New Mexico.