9th August, 2023
An 80-year-old former Olympian with Parkinson’s disease will be among the three passengers on Virgin Galactic’s inaugural space tourism journey, which takes off on Thursday.
Jon Goodwin, from Newcastle, would board the VSS Unity with Keisha Schahaff, 46, and her daughter Anastatia Mayers, 18, who is studying physics in Aberdeen.
After winning a prize draw, the two women would become the first mother and daughter to travel to space.
Goodwin purchased a $250,000 ticket for his seat 18 years ago.
It would depart from New Mexico in the United States at 4 p.m. (1500 GMT) on the motherships VMS Eve and VSS Unity.
It would separate them and transport them into sub-orbital space, where they would experience weightlessness while staring back at Earth.
The voyage would collect funds for Space for Humanity, a non-profit organisation that aims to take ordinary people into space to gain a broader perspective on Earth’s problems.
Beth Moses, an astronaut teacher, would join them.
Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic successfully completed the company’s first commercial mission in June, sending Italian astronauts into space to conduct a range of scientific experiments.
The first private astronaut mission, Galactic 02, will go place on Thursday.
dpa/NAN