Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo nears tourism goal with first solo flight from Spaceport America

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo commercial space plane has officially made its first successful test flight out of Spaceport America, its base in New Mexico.

On Friday, the company announced that its suborbital spacecraft, called VSS Unity, marked "an important flight test milestone in preparation for commercial service."

Though Unity had already completed several successful glide tests — including milestone flights in December 2018 and February 2019 — this was the first successful free flight in the New Mexico airspace.