On May 22, Virgin Galactic took two people to the very edge of suborbital space for the first time in more than two years, and its third time overall. It’s the first of four planned crewed missions slated for this year.

What happened: Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo took off from Spaceport America in New Mexico at 10:34 am Eastern Time Saturday. The spacecraft, named VSS Unity, was carried into the air via a large cargo aircraft. At 11:26 am, Unity was released, fired its engines, and headed to a peak altitude of 89.2 kilometers (just passing the US Air Force and NASA's definition for where space begins at 80 kilometers, but falling short of the internationally-recognized boundary of 100 kilometers). It then headed back to the surface and made a runway landing at Spaceport America just 17 minutes later. The mission also carried research experiments under NASA’s Flight Opportunities program.