A teenager and her mother have become the first mother-and-daughter team to travel to space, and they did it for free.
Ana Mayers, 18, and her mother, Keisha Schahaff, 46, were among the travelers of the first tourist Virgin Galactic flight. The pair were gifted tickets on the once-in-a-lifetime trip through a fundraising contest hosted by the non-profit Space for Humanity. Additionally, Mayers is now the second-youngest person to go to space. Both mother and daughter have also become the first women from the Caribbean to see the galaxy firsthand, hailing from Antigua, though Mayers is a philosophy and physics student at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, BBC reports.
Founded in 2004 by Richard Branson, Virgin Galactic has worked for years ahead of Thursday’s successful tour to bring paying clients to space commercially. Although Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin was the first to conduct commercial space excursions, Branson shed tears after his ship finished the trip, which took just a little over an hour to complete.
Alongside Schahaff and Mayers, Jon Goodwin became the first Olympian and the first individual with Parkinson’s Disease to travel to space. The 80-year-old competed in the canoeing competition at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Germany. He has been waiting 18 years to take the flight after purchasing his ticket for $250,000 in 2005.
“I’m hoping that I instill in other people around the world, as well as people with Parkinson’s, that it doesn’t stop you doing things that’s out of the normal if you’ve got some illness,” he shared after the voyage.
