An Antigua and Barbuda woman and her daughter, as well as an 80-year-old man, will go into space with Virgo Galactic 10 August.

This mission, named Galactic 02, will be the second commercial flight of the American company founded by billionaire Richard Branson. The most recent flight took place on June 29 with several Italian passengers.

If the test flights are included, it will be the spacecraft’s seventh time into space.

Keisha Schahaff, 46, and her daughter Anastatia Mayers, 18, won the ticket in a raffle after participating in a fundraiser organized by Virgin Galactic. The amount the mother donated has not been disclosed, but donations start at $10.

It was Richard Branson himself who broke the news to Keisha Schahaff by going to her house to deliver the astronaut suit.

“As a child I was always fascinated by space,” Keisha Schahaff told AFP at the time. “This is a great opportunity to feel alive.”

The third passenger, Jon Goodwin, 80, competed in the 1972 Olympics and becomes the second person with Parkinson’s disease to go into space, but not the oldest as the record was broken by William Shatner, at 90

Also on board the ship will be Virgin Galactic employee Beth Moses and two pilots.

A 90 minute ride

The flight takes about an hour and a half, but passengers only stay in space for a few minutes.

A plane first takes off from a runway in New Mexico and about 15 km high drops the ship, which looks like a large private jet.

Virgin Galactic company ship used by Richard Branson for suborbital flights.

It then starts the engine and accelerates vertically to an altitude of more than 50 miles (80 km), the limit of the US military’s space. Immediately afterwards it descends slidingly.

According to Virgin Galactic, which has promised one spaceflight each month, fewer than 700 people have flown into space so far.

Some 800 customers bought their tickets, initially at a price between $200,000 and $250,000 per passenger, which has now risen to $450,000.

Virgin Galactic competes with billionaire Jeff Bezos’ company, Blue Origin, which also offers short suborbital flights.