United States – We have spoken about it for a long time, but the first spaceborne Earth was still a draft. This time it’s official. The Virgin Galactic space takes place in New Mexico, about 70 km from Las Cruces.

This spaceport, the “airport” for the space will send rich tourists (142,500 dollars per flight) in space with the ship being developed by Virgin Galactic, a company founded by Richard Branson.

The aircraft will leave the trail of space with its secured rocket-plane. Once reached a certain altitude, the aircraft rocket detach and slipped by on an additional 100 km of altitude (suborbital). It will be up on the runway two hours later or so, after a few minutes spent in a state of weightlessness.

At the inauguration, the governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson said that through this spaceport, the State of New Mexico “has become the leader in the commercial space flight.”

According to Virgin Galactic, approximately 300 seats have been reserved for the first flights which should take place at the end of 2010. The State of New Mexico has invested nearly 142 million euros in the project.

Spaceport America Groundbreaking Ceremony at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, June 18, ‘09