Virgin Galactic scoots closer to commercial space flights

On Saturday, Flying at Mach 3 and reaching more than 55 miles above the Earth, British billionaire Sir Richard Branson's private spaceship company Virgin Galactic completed its first manned space flight from its new homeport in New Mexico.

This is a milestone in Branson's near two-decades effort to create a commercial "spaceline" to take paying customers into outer space.

Touted as the first human spaceflight from the state, Branson's SpaceShipTwo craft lifted off in the desert about 45 miles northeast of Las Cruces, New Mexico, about 10:35 a.m.

About 50 minutes later, traveling at more than 2,300 miles an hour, it reached a height NASA recognizes as space and attained suborbital flight status.