Virgin Galactic: how was the trip of billionaire Richard Branson to the gates of space aboard his own ship

 British billionaire Sir Richard Branson fulfilled a lifetime's ambition by flying to the gates of space this Sunday.

His Unity rocket plane took off from New Mexico, in the United States, to spend a moment of weightlessness outside Earth. Shortly after an hour, he returned safely to the planet's surface.

The mission of the owner of Virgin Group is clear: to evaluate the experience to open these trips to the public and to boost the nascent space tourism industry.

The trip made him the first of the new space tourism pioneers to test his own spacecraft, surpassing Amazon's Jeff Bezos and SpaceX's Elon Musk.