Virgin Galactics SpaceShipTwo made its third rocket-powered supersonic test flight about eight months before the space tourism company has said it plans to begin offering commercial flights.

Virgin Galactics would-be commercial spaceship has made its third rocket-powered, supersonic test flight, surpassing its previous height milestones and edging closer to its ambitions of boosting extremely well-paying customers into space.

Staff Writer

Elizabeth Barber is a staff writer at The Christian Science Monitor. She holds a masters degree from Columbia Journalism School and a bachelors degree in International Relations and English from SUNY Geneseo. Before coming to the Monitor, she was a freelance reporter at DNAinfo, a New York City breaking news site. She has also been an intern at The Cambodia Daily, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and at Washington D.C.s The Middle East Journal.

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SpaceShipTwo, Virgin Galactics supersonic spaceship, reached about 71,000 feet in its latest test flight on Friday, about 2,000 feet higher than its previous test flight in September.

It was the first time that Virgin Galactic pilot Dave Mackay commanded the plane in a rocket-powered flight, joining a test pilot from Scaled Composites, the company that develops Virgin Galactics spaceships. Scaled Composites test pilots had flown SpaceShipTwos previous rocket test flights.

SpaceShipTwo lifted off from Californias Mojave Air and Space Port under a WhiteKightTwo carrier jet at 7:22 a.m. local time. At around 46,000 feet, the spaceship was dropped from the carrier, ignited its engines, and burst to Mach 1.4. The rocket burn that carried the craft to 71,000 feet, near the middle of the Earths stratosphere, lasted just 20 seconds.

The test flight cleared the latest hurdle in British billionaire Sir Richard Bransons race to make his company the worlds first space tourism outlet. The ventures planned commercial start date is August 2014.

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Virgin Galactic edges closer to space in third rocket test flight (+video)