Virgin Galactic 02 launch live updates: A textbook landing! The company's space-tourism flight successfully lands after a spectacular mission.

• Virgin Galactic has successfully flown and landed its first space-tourism mission.

• The passengers are Olympian Jon Goodwin and mother-daughter duo Keisha Schahaff and Anastatia Mayers.

• Check here for live updates as the company's space plane flies them more than 50 miles above Earth.

Virgin Galactic has launched its first tourist passengers to the edge of space. Olympian Jon Goodwin and mother-daughter duo Keisha Schahaff and Anastatia Mayers are now officially astronauts.

The flight, called Galactic 02, lifted off from Spaceport America in New Mexico and took the three passengers to the edge of space where they experienced weightlessness as they looked out of the ship's many windows into space.

Space tourism holds great promise for the company: In its second quarter earnings report, Virgin Galactic attributed an increase in quarterly revenue from $357,000 in 2022 to $1,871,000 this year to its commercial spaceflight endeavors.

The pilots applied the brakes and brought the VSS Unity to a stop.

The passengers applauded inside the cabin.

Touchdown! The VSS Unity is cruising down the 12,000-foot-long, 200-foot-wide runway back on Earth.

A quick shot of the passengers shows everybody buckled in for the glide back to Earth.

After screaming to the edge of space and experiencing weightlessness, the crew eventually started to descend back to Earth and buckled in for their return.

An altitude tracker on the livestream showed a peak of 290,420 feet.

The passengers reached a peak altitude of 290,420 feet before descending on their way back to Earth.

The passengers are unbuckled, floating in zero gravity, at the peak of their flight.

The space plane is predicted to peak at 289,000 feet above sea level.

The VSS Unity separates from its mothership and fires its engines.

The space plane is pointed upwards, at Mach 2, headed toward space.

Screaming fans wave national flags at a watch party on the island of Antigua.

The livestream cut to Antigua, where a large and loud watch party is gathered outside. Passengers Anastatia Mayers and Keisha Schahaff are the first people from Antigua and Barbuda to travel to the edge of space.

A sneak peek inside the space plane's cabin shows the passengers waiting for a big drop.

The three passengers and Virgin Galactic's astronaut trainer, Beth Moses, are buckled into their seats, each with their own window as the mothership carries them through the first leg of their journey. They're waiting for the mothership to drop them so they can scream toward space.

Virgin Galactic is barely breaking even with its upcoming $250,000-a-seat flights

At the beginning of this month, Virgin announced they'd made $1.9 million in revenue during the second quarter of 2023, which represents a net loss compared to the same period last year, CNBC reported.

The next two quarters are expected to be equally slim, with the company announcing projected revenues of $1 million each. Despite that, the company is launching its second commercial flight today.

But it's not making as much money as it could from this launch, which may be some of the reasons Virgin Galactic is barely breaking even.

Of the 800 tickets sold thus far, three quarters have gone for about $250,000. But in June,  Branson's company announced that the price for aspiring astronauts would raise to $450,000 per seat.

Because of the astronomical costs of running a space flight operation, this doesn't cut it. The company has been pouring money into research efforts for other aircraft, like its Delta-class spaceship, CNBC reported.

It could bolster its profits by angling for more research flights, like the Galactic 01 flight launched last quarter in partnership with the Italian government. These flights are more profitable than passenger flights, producing roughly $600,000 in revenue per seat, SpaceNews reported.

"He's been very patient with trying to see this company through to success. I would say the time is coming where they really do need to deliver on that," Caleb Henry, director of research at space advisory firm Quilty Analytics, told Fortune.

Launch weather report: Galactic 02 should have clear skies — for now

Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity is likely to launch into clear skies that will soon darken.

The National Weather Service forecasts clear weather up to about 2 p.m. local time around the launch site in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.

The flight is due to take off soon after 9 a.m. local time.

After the clear weather fades, scattered thunderstorms and rain are predicted, with wind gusts that could go up to 20 miles per hour.

The flight should be done by then, though.

What will the launch itself look like? Not your typical rocket scene.

Though the VSS Unity is a spacecraft, it won't be blasting from a launchpad like a SpaceX or Blue Origin rocket when takeoff rolls around at 11 a.m. ET.

Instead, the ship is attached to a "mothership," a carrier aircraft that is a lot like a normal plane.

The aircraft carries VSS Unity to 50,000 feet altitude, where the spaceship separates.

That's when the spacecraft blasts its rocket engine, reaching up to Mach 3 to go up about 300,000 feet in the air.

See inside the ship that will take Virgin Galactic passengers to the edge of space

Passengers will be riding the VSS Unity. The picture above shows the inside of the ship.

At the top of the cabin are the pilot's controls, followed by a few rows on passenger seats.

At the peak of the ship's ascent, passengers can look through the cabin's round windows to see the curvature of the Earth before removing their seat belts to float around the cabin, just as microgravity kicks in when the ship turns around.

There's a little space at the back for scientific equipment when the craft is used for research, but that's it.

You can see the inside of the ship here:

Because the trip is very short — about 90 minutes — the ship has very few amenities, not even bathrooms, passenger Jon Goodwin previously said.

"One thing the rocket ship doesn't have is a toilet, so we will be wearing nappies, which takes me back a bit," the 80-year-old Olympian told Sky News.

Mom who is bringing her daughter into space says she's not fazed by the OceanGate disaster

Keisha Schahaff will be bringing her 18-year-old daughter with her on Virgin Galactic's flight.

Asked about the recent OceanGate Expeditions submersible trip to the Titanic, Schahaff told DailyMail.com this had not made her nervous about the trip and that she is "completely elated" about the upcoming flight.

The doomed OceanGate expedition killed five, including a father-and-son duo: Suleman Dawood and his 19-year-old son Shahzada.

The deaths raised concern about the safety of extreme tourism in general — though Virgin Galactic vigorously rejected the comparison.

CEO Michael Colglazier said in June that Virgin's focus on safety made the comparison unfair — noting that the company has been regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration since 2016.

"Virgin Galactic ships are built, they're designed, they're maintained in a way that leverages decades of experience in the aerospace industry," Colglazier said — drawing a contrast with OceanGate, which was unregulated and notably cavalier about safety.

Recap: Virgin Galactic's passengers are set to fly more than 50 miles above the ground but not enter Earth's orbit.

This is a suborbital flight, meaning it will not enter Earth's orbit.

Virgin Galactic's space plane, called the VSS Unity, is not powerful enough for that.

Instead, if all goes according to plan, a double-fuselage aircraft called "VMS Eve" will serve as a mothership and carry the spacecraft roughly 10 miles above sea level. Then it will drop the VSS Unity.

The pilots must then fire the rocket plane's engines, tilt its nose toward the heavens, and roar upwards another 45 miles or so.

Near the peak of the flight, more than 50 miles above the ground, the plane will glide.

With the curvature of the Earth stretching below and the blackness of space looming above, the passengers will be able to unbuckle, float weightlessly around the cabin, and gawk out the plane's 17 windows. That will last about five minutes until the plane begins to fall back to Earth.

The passengers will not fly above the Kármán line, which is sometimes considered the threshold of space at 62 miles above sea level. But the Federal Aviation Administration has previously recognized VSS Unity pilots as astronauts.

When is the Virgin Galactic flight today?

Virgin Galactic will be live-streaming the flight Thursday, starting with a countdown just before the release of the spaceship VSS unity from its mothership.

Tune in to the live stream here at 11 a.m. ET, which will be 9 a.m. at the launch site in the New Mexico desert:

At least 800 people are waiting in line for their seat on Virgin Galactic's flight — including Elon Musk

At least 800 people are waiting in line for their seat on the Virgin Galactic flight.

Customers waiting for their turn reportedly include Elon Musk, who paid a $10,000 deposit for the ticket, Richard Branson said in 2021.

Virgin Galactic started selling advanced tickets for the flight in the early 2000s. Though some early tickets were sold for around $200,000 to $250,000, they are now being sold for $450,000, with an initial deposit of $150,000.

These aren't the most expensive ticket prices on the flight — research and astronaut training seats can fetch up to $600,000, Space.com reported in 2021.

Galactic 02 kicks off a new era of space tourism for Virgin Galactic.

This is Virgin Galactic's second commercial flight, but it's the first to carry paying customers. In June, Galactic 01 carried a three-person crew from the Italian Air Force and the National Research Council of Italy.

Before that, the company's space plane had only flown employees and its billionaire founder, Richard Branson.

Virgin Galactic plans to fly paying customers to the edge of space every month.

The passengers are 80-year-old British Olympian Jon Goodwin and mother-daughter duo Keisha Schahaff and Anastatia Mayers.

Goodwin competed in canoeing in the 1972 Munich games. He is set to be the first Olympian to travel to the edge of space, and the second person with Parkinson's disease.

Goodwin bought his ticket 18 years ago for $250,000, making him the fourth person to snatch a commercial seat on a Virgin Galactic flight, he told Sky News. He added that he "certainly did" worry it would never happen.

Schahaff is a health and wellness coach. She won two tickets in a raffle to raise funds for the nonprofit Space for Humanity. She's bringing her 18-year-old daughter, Mayers, who is a philosophy and physics student at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland.

They will be the first people from Antigua and Barbuda to take a spaceflight, according to Virgin Galactic.

The trio participated in a five-day readiness program in New Mexico, designed to prepare them "physically, mentally and spiritually" for the trip, according to the company.

Beth Moses, Chief Astronaut Instructor for Virgin Galactic, is set to join the passengers in the cabin of the VSS Unity for the flight. The company's pilots CJ Sturckow and Kelly Latimer are slated to fly the space plane.

Read the original article on Business Insider