COVeR STORY

The first private space rocket blasts off!

ave you ever dreamed of travelitig into outer space? HThanks to a team of from the government. The U.S. altitude, or height, of nearly inventors who have set their sights space agency, NASA, sends people 70 miles. It broke through Earth's high, that reality may be into space. atmosphere at 62 miles high. This closer than you think. About the size of a height is considered the point A rocket plane called minivan, SpaceShipOne where space begins. SpaceShipOne launched took off from a runway SpaceShipOne blasted into the into the record books in in California's Mojave edge of space at three times the October. It became the Desert. It was attached speed of sound. Sound travels first private spacecraft to beneath a carrier plane about 700 miles per hour. carry humans into space called White Knight. and back twice within one week. At 9 miles up, SpaceShipOne Prize Patrol The SpaceShipOne team won a blasted free of the carrier plane. About an hour and a half after $10 million prize for its record- Then SpaceShipOne fired its rocket takeoff, pilot Brian Binnie glided breaking feat. Called the Ansari X engine and streaked skyward to an the rocket plane to a smooth Prize, it was designed to encourage people to build spacecraft to take paying tourists into space.

Bound for Space SpaceShipOne is not the first spacecraft to travel into space. However, it is the first one that was READY FOR TAKEOFF: SpaceShipOne, attached underneath the carrier plane White Knight, prepares to make the first of its two flights into space. built and launched without help

Weekly Reader Grade -Top Mihe Fisher/KRT; Bottom left: AP/Wide Woria Photos; Bottom right: Aimando Arorizo/Zuma Press SpaceShtpOne reaches the edge of space. It cruises to a maximum height of about 70 miles.

SpaceShtpOne reenters At 9 miles up, Earth's atmosphere. SpaceShipOne is released from White Knight anti TOUCHDOWN! blasts upward. SpaceShipOne glides to a smooth landing about an hour and a half later.

UP, UP. AND AWAY! SpaceShipOtie is lifted off the runway in the Mojave Desert in California by the carrier plane White Knight. TAKEOFF LANDING

FLYING HIGH: Pilot Brian Binnie waves an American flag atop SpaceShipOne after his team captured the $10 million prize.

Associated Press. "It feels a little bit like Kitty Hawk must have."

Tickets to Space What does the future hold? A British airline owner wants his company to use SpaceShipOne technology to take paying tourists landing on the desert runway. History in the Making into space by 2007. Thousands of people gathered to In December 1903, the Wright Officials say the flights of watch the missioti, which Bintiie brothers launched the age of SpaceShipOne marked the dcsctibed as "fantastic." aviation, or flight. They made the beginning of the space tourism To win the $10 million prize, the world's first powered flight in Kitty industry. "Today, history was spacecraft's team had to meet Hawk, North Carolina. made," said Peter Diamandis, the several requirements. The craft had Flash-forward a little more than founder of the Ansari X Prize. to reach the edge of space twice a century later, and a new "We're at the birth of a new era within a two-week period and carry milestone in aviation history has [in spaceflight.]" © the weight of three people, been reached. "This is the true including the pilot. SpaceShipOne frontier of transportation," Marion ——•THINK CRITICALLY Would you want to travel as a heat out 26 teams that had entered Blakey. the head of the Federal space tourist? Why or why not? to compete for the prize. Aviation Administration, told The

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