Virgin Galactic, the space tourism company founded by billionaire Richard Branson, conducted a second successful test flight of its VSS Unity spacecraft in the skies above Mojave, California on Friday morning and this one made history.
Why it matters: The flight brings the company one step closer to realizing its vision of carrying tourists to space for tickets that reportedly cost up to $250,000 a piece. The test flight on Friday included a third passenger, Beth Moses, who is the company's chief astronaut instructor and a micro-gravity researcher. She became the first passenger to reach space aboard a commercial space craft.
The first privately built lunar lander, a vehicle made in Israel, is on its way to the moon. It successfully deployed after launching at 8:45 p.m. Thursday off Cape Canaveral on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and is expected to land on the moon's surface in April.
Why it matters: Along with the U.S., the former Soviet Union and China were, until tonight, the only countries to successfully land spacecraft on the lunar surface. Axios' Andrew Freedman notes that this lander — named Beresheet, meaning "in the beginning" in Hebrew — is the first to be entirely financed and built by the private-sector. It demonstrates that the public-private space race is on, with the moon in many companies' and countries' sights.
