Virgin Galactic officially completed its first fully crewed suborbital flight today. The Unity 22 mission saw two pilots and four crew members—including Virgin founder Richard Branson—reach an altitude of 53.5 miles in the VSS Unity before they safely returned to the Spaceport America complex in New Mexico.
There is some debate as to whether or not Unity 22 counted as a true flight to space. Virgin Galactic has billed it as such, but the Jeff Bezos-founded space exploration company Blue Origin tweeted on July 9 that only missions that fly above the Kármán line qualify as spaceflights. The Kármán line is 62 miles above sea level; Unity 22 fell short by 8.5 miles. Blue Origin’s first fully manned flight, meanwhile, is set to take Bezos and his crew above the Kármán line in the New Shepard rocket on July 20.
This means that Branson was either the first to space by nine days, or Bezos will be the first to reach space by climbing an additional 8.5 miles. Either way, both Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are closer than ever to bringing space exploration into the private realm.
Virgin Galactic also started a charity sweepstakes with Omaze that will see one grand prize winner receive two seats on one of the company’s upcoming flights. Proceeds from the sweepstakes will go to Charity for America before reaching Space for Humanity, a nonprofit organization that claims to be “expanding access to space for all of humanity.”
The sweepstakes winner will be announced on September 29; they’re expected to join a Virgin Galactic mission in “early 2022.”
