Richard Branson is back on Earth after a historic 15-minute space flight with 5 crew members.
Branson and fellow space travellers from his Virgin Galactic space tourism company reached an altitude of about 53 miles over the New Mexico desert — enough to experience three to four minutes of weightlessness and see the curvature of the Earth — and then safely glided back home to a runway landing.
The British billionaire said he said done many ridiculous things in his life but the trip to space was an experience of a lifetime.
Earlier, a massive carrier plane took off and ascended to 50,000 feet before dropping space plane VSS Unity to complete the rest of the flight using its rocket-powered engine. While the flight landed back an hour after the take off, the space plane's journey was only about 15 minutes.