The Virgin Galactic spacecraft carrying British billionaire and Virgin Group founder Richard Branson has successfully landed on Earth. The Unity-22 spacecraft has landed at a cosmodrome in the US state of New Mexico.

The spacecraft launched today, July 11, at 17:30 Moscow time from the first private American spaceport Spaceport America. In addition to the entrepreneur himself, Chief Astronaut Instructor Beth Moses, Lead Operations Engineer Colin Bennett and Vice President Sirisha Bundla went into space, piloted by Dave McKay and Michael Masucci.

The device was undocked from the carrier aircraft at 18:25 at an altitude of about 15 kilometers, after which the jet engine was turned on on Unity-22. During the flight, the device was able to rise to an altitude of 92 kilometers, where a crew of six people could feel weightlessness for several minutes. After Unity-22 entered the dense layers of the atmosphere again and landed at 18:38 Moscow time. The total flight duration was about an hour.

Before the flight, all crew members and passengers of the spacecraft were thoroughly trained.

Richard Branson flew into space nine days ahead of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, whose aerospace corporation Blue Origin is a competitor to Virgin Galactic. At the same time, the specialists of the Bezos company have already stated that Branson's flight is not space, since the ship passed below the Karman line, from which space begins.