Los Angeles - Virgin Galactic's experimental SpaceshipTwo (SS2), an aircraft designed to one day carry paying customers into space, had its maiden flight in the California desert on Monday, company officials announced.
The spacecraft, brainchild of British entrepreneur Richard Branson, took off nestled under the wing of its mothership White Knight Two (WK2).
In the future, WK2 will carry SpaceshipTwo to around 16 km before dropping the smaller spaceship and allowing it to fire up its rocket motor to launch into space.
Monday's test flight, which lasted just a few minutes, was the first in which both aircraft went aloft without separating. The test flight was carried out about 130km north-east of Los Angeles.
Branson announced the flight in a brief statement on his Twitter micro-blogging site.
Virgin Galactic aims to become the world's first commercial company to promote space tourism.