Virgin Galactic has announced it will launch a human space flight from its Spaceport America facility in New Mexico in about two weeks.
Previously the company had launched crews on two up-and-down suborbital flights from its test facility in the Mojave Desert in California, according to Business Insider.
The upcoming flight is scheduled to launch between Nov. 19-23. If successful, it will bring the company a step closer to its goal of taking passengers into space from its New Mexico headquarters.
According to Business Insider, the firm has already sold at least 600 tickets, ranging in price from $200,000 to $250,000, for future commercial flights. About 900 additional people have put down $1,000 deposits for flights. Each flight would carry about six passengers and two crew members each.
The November flight will also carry "revenue-generating payloads" for NASA, likely in the form of science experiments. The company has agreed to fly the agency's astronauts and payloads on suborbital missions.
The firm’s founder, Richard Branson, is set to fly into space from the facility in 2021. However, the exact date of that flight has not yet been announced.
The company has conducted various test flights since one of its space vehicles crashed during a test fight in 2014, killing one crew member.
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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