6 tourists, including a mother-daughter duo, successfully travel to space!

Humans have finally travelled to space! Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity has achieved this feat of taking the first group of tourists to space, and the group successfully landed there recently. A reusable rocket-powered space plane was used for this journey.

The mission, known as Galactic 02, took off shortly after 11 AM ET from Spaceport America in New Mexico. There were six individuals aboard the spacecraft, which included the space plane’s commander and former NASA astronaut CJ Sturckow, pilot Kelly Latimer, and Beth Moses, Virgin Galactic’s chief astronaut instructor, who trained the crew before the flight.
The spacecraft also took three private passengers, including health and wellness coach Keisha Schahaff and her 18-year-old daughter, Anastasia Mayers.
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As per the reports, Schahaff managed to win a seat for her during a fundraising competition by Space for Humanity, a non-profit organisation seeking to democratise space travel. As for Mayers, she is studying philosophy and physics at Aberdeen University in Scotland. It’s interesting to note that Schahaff and Mayers are the first mother-daughter duo to venture to space together.
The mission also marks the most number of women flying in a single mission to space. The spacecraft also carried former Olympian Jon Goodwin, who participated in the 1972 Olympics in Munich as a canoeist. This is another interesting fact to note that at 80 years old, Goodwin was the second passenger with Parkinson’s disease and the first Olympian to embark on a trip to space.
Referring to this extraordinary journey, he stated that when he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2014, he was determined not to let it stand in the way of living life to the fullest. He also added that to go to space with Parkinson’s is completely magical.

As regarding the spacecraft, Galactic 02 is a suborbital flight, and although VSS Unity does not reach the orbit, the trajectory lets travellers experience several minutes of weightlessness at an altitude high enough for them to see the Earth’s curvature.
If you check out the live footage inside the spacecraft, it can be seen that the passengers unstrapped themselves from their seats to see the Earth from up above through the windows as they floated in the spacecraft.