New Mexico, USA. Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson makes his first spaceflight, a suborbital flight at an altitude of 82 km (51 mi) in a horizontal takeoff vehicle called Unity. The craft carries six passengers. Branson thus becomes the first private individual to travel on a suborbital flight aboard a spacecraft he helped fund. There has been debate as to whether Virgin Galactic, which approaches but does not reach the K\u00e1rm\u00e1n line, would actually have achieved such a first private commercial spaceflight. The United States and NASA define the edge of outer space as 80 km (50 mi) above Earth (which is approximately the minimum possible altitude a satellite in a highly elliptical Earth orbit can reach and sustain its velocity). All other spacefaring countries and the FAI define outer space as 100 km (62 mi) above the K\u00e1rm\u00e1n line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Mexico, USA. Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson makes his first spaceflight, a suborbital flight at…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-664571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-as-en"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n