On Monday private space tourism company Virgin Galactic successfully conducted their first rocket-powered test of SpaceShipTwo their private space plane.
The ship broke the sound barrier during its test run, after being set lose by it's "mothership" WhiteKnightTwo.
The test sets the road for the final phase of testing — possibly to be completed by the end of the year. Then, Virgin Galactic will have to make good on the more than 500 space tourism flights they've sold for $200,000 each.
Here's Sir Richard Branson in SpaceShipTwo, the commercial edition of their space tourism shuttle. Branson started Virgin Galactic in 2004.
Group photo of the Future Astronauts and Sir Richard Branson outside SpaceShipTwo. The ship has done dozens of test flights, but this was the first in which they fired up the rocket engine.
Previously, they spent time testing these rockets on the ground. They'd never fired it up in the air before.
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