Virgin Galactic: how to watch Galactic 02 space tourism flight live, UK time, live stream - and passengers

Virgin Galactic's first space tourism flight will take off with three passengers today (10 August), including an 80-year-old former Olympian with Parkinson's disease.

Keisha Schahaff and her daughter, Anastatia Mayers, who is studying physics in Aberdeen, will travel with Jon Goodwin from Newcastle on the VSS Unity for the 90-minute journey.

The two women, who won a coveted spot on the trip through a raffle on a Virgin flight from Antigua to London in 2021, will be the first mother and daughter to travel to space. They reportedly only found out they had won tickets to travel to space when Sir Richard Branson turned up at their home.

Goodwin - a retired slalom canoeist who was a competitor in the C-2 slalom event at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich - obtained his seat 18 years ago after purchasing a ticket for $250,000 (£194,500).

The three will be joined by astronaut instructor Beth Moses, and the trip will raise funds for Space for Humanity, a non-profit group which seeks to send ordinary citizens into space to give them a “grander perspective” on the challenges facing Earth.

In June, Sir Richard’s Virgin Galactic successfully completed the company’s first commercial spaceflight, taking Italian astronauts into space to conduct a number of scientific experiments. The company is calling the first private astronaut mission Galactic 02.

What will happen?

If everything goes according to plan, the VSS Unity spacecraft will launch from a "mothership" aircraft and ascend to a height of 50,000 feet. The spacecraft will then separate and start its rocket engine to launch into space.

The ship will start to descend after reaching its peak, which will be at a height of about 300,000 feet above Earth. A brief period of microgravity will be felt by passengers as the ship returns to Earth's atmosphere and descends to the surface.

How can I watch it?

Unlike more traditional missions to space, there won't be a spectacular rocket launch sending the crew up into the atmosphere. But you will still be able to catch live coverage of the event through Virgin Galactic's YouTube channel, which is live-streaming the launch.

On Thursday 10 October after taking off at 4pm (BST) from New Mexico in the US in the mothership VMS Eve, VSS Unity will separate and take them into sub-orbital space, where they will briefly experience weightlessness while looking back at Earth.

The whole trip should take about 90 minutes.