A rocket plane transporting an 80-year-old British former Olympian, a student from Aberdeen, and her mother is scheduled to take off from New Mexico. Anastasia Mayers and her mother, Keisha Schahaff, won competition tickets for the Virgin Galactic flight.
Jon Goodwin of Newcastle-under-Lyme will become the second individual with Parkinson's disease to travel to space. The mission will be viewed as an additional measure of space tourism's viability.
The launch window for Virgin Galactic 02 begins at 08:30 local time (15:00 BST). It is the second commercial flight made by Virgin Galactic. The Italian Air Force and scientists conducted experiments in weightlessness during a 70-minute mission in June.
On the initial leg of its voyage, the rocket is transported aboard the Eve carrier aircraft. It will then attempt to start its engine and ascend to an altitude of 279,000 feet (85 kilometers).
A seat on a Virgin Galactic flight has been advertised for as much as $500,000 (£350,000).
Mr. Goodwin, a canoeist who competed in the 1972 Olympics, paid $250,000 for his ticket in 2005, but feared he would be unable to compete due to his diagnosis. He stated that he wished to demonstrate that his condition did not define him. Parkinson's disease is a condition characterized by the progressive degeneration of cerebral regions.
Parkinson's UK will host a party in Stoke-on-Trent where approximately 100 people will witness him travel into space.
Antiguan Ms. Schahaff was en route to the United Kingdom to arrange her daughter's visa when she entered a competition to join the voyage. She learned months after the fact that she had won two spaceflight seats in a random drawing.
She saw Henry Branson entering her yard along with the entire team that swarmed into her house proclaiming that she was the winner and she will be going to space.
Her daughter Anastatia will become the second-youngest person to travel to space, and she aims to serve as an inspiration to others. She says, "That would be very important to me in Scotland, Antigua, and everywhere else I have ties." "My goal is to eliminate any limitations that we impose on ourselves or that the world imposes on us."
The flight will attempt to reach the border of space, approximately 85 kilometers above Earth, where passengers will experience weightlessness for a few minutes. The spacecraft lacks sufficient velocity to accomplish a full orbit of the Earth.
The three passengers are the first of roughly 800 people who have purchased tickets for a voyage on the Unity rocket. Some have waited over a decade for their opportunity, and the majority will continue to do so.
Dennis Tito, an American multimillionaire, reportedly paid $20 million in 2001 to become the world's first space passenger.
Blue Origin, owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, recently defeated Virgin Galactic in the contest to become the first company to transport paying passengers into space. Both companies claim that their missions advance science while also catering to the extremely wealthy, but space tourism has been criticized for its high cost and negative environmental impact.
