Virgin Galactic spaceship makes first test flight

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Virgin Galactic spaceship makes first test flight

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23 March,2010 07:22 pm

A suborbital spaceship owned by aspiring space tourism operator Virgin Galactic was airlifted into the skies over California's Mojave Desert for its debut test flight. The sleek, six-passenger ship, called VSS Enterprise, remained attached to its carrier aircraft throughout the two-hour, 54-minute flight. Virgin Galactic, an offshoot of billionaire Richard Branson's London-based Virgin Group, has collected about 45 million dollars in deposits and fares from more than 330 aspiring amateur astronauts, each of whom will be charged 200,000 dollars to experience a few minutes of suborbital spaceflight. Test flights are scheduled through 2011, with commercial operations targeted to begin in 2012.