It had taken nearly two decades, one fatal test-flight loss, and a two-year grounding for upgrades, but on 29 June 2023 Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic finally opened its doors to paying customers. Mission Galactic 01 lifted off from Spaceport America in New Mexico at 10:30 EDT, the twin-fuselage carrier aircraft VMS Eve climbing to 44,500 feet before releasing the rocket-powered VSS Unity. Ignition came at 11:28 EDT; within minutes the spaceplane reached 279,000 feet—52.9 miles above the desert, beyond the 50-mile threshold recognised by NASA and the FAA as the boundary of space. Onboard were three researchers from the Italian Air Force and National Research Council, two company pilots, and an astronaut trainer. The mission lasted roughly seventy minutes, with roughly sixty seconds of rocket-powered flight (across a fourteen-minute spaceflight including glide and descent) and a few precious minutes of weightlessness for science. It was the first purchased, dedicated commercial research mission in suborbital space, and it proved that the industry born of SpaceShipOne’s Ansari X Prize triumph could sustain a revenue-earning operation.