Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwoDecember 7, 2009--Aspiring space tourists got a first look at their future ride late Monday, when Virgin Galactic unveiled the first of its long-awaited SpaceShipTwo planes--pictured in a hangar at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California Monday with wings folded upward, suspended from the middle of its twin-fuselage launch vehicle.The craft, dubbed the V.S.S. Enterprise, is intended to provide space tourists with two-and-a-half-hour flights into suborbital space, where they'll experience weightlessness and see the curvature of the Earth. (Read full story.)

Photograph courtesy Mark Greenberg, Virgin Galactic

Space: Virgin Galactic Debut and More

See the world's first commercial spaceship, the first direct picture of a planet orbiting a sunlike star, the deepest known image of the universe, and more in our selection of the week's best space pictures.

December 14, 2009