Billionaire Richard Branson, along with five other engers, goes into space aboard Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity rocket, a space tourism company founded by himself. The flight takes place this Sunday (11) at 10:00 am in Brasilia and will be broadcast live on YouTube and on the website of Virgin.
The Unity spacecraft will be taken to a certain altitude coupled to the launch aircraft VMS Eve (named after Branson's mother), taking off from the "spaceport" Spaceport America, in Los Cruces, in the US state of New Mexico. The facility was built by Virgin itself.
After being launched by Eve, the ship Unity it should rise to about 89km high above New Mexico. The Unity crew will feel weightless for a few minutes and then begin the descent back to Earth, landing in Los Cruces. The entire flight should take about 90 minutes.
The Unity 22 mission is Virgin Galactic's fourth manned flight and the first with a full crew of two pilots, four mission specialists and six engers, including Branson. The Billionaire's spaceflight comes shortly after Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon, said he would go into space with Blue Origin, his own space tourism company. The feud between the two has been dubbed the “Billionaire Space Race” in the media.
