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Richard Branson in Sydney at the end of 2019
Photo: Bianca De Marchi / dpa
British billionaire Richard Branson plans to fly into space on July 11th with the help of his space company Virgin Galactic.
The company announced the date for the planned "Unity 22" mission on Thursday.
In addition to two pilots, four passengers, including Branson, are said to fly in the space capsule.
The announcement was accompanied by a one and a half minute long film reminiscent of the trailer for a Hollywood film - with Branson in the lead role as "Astronaut 001":
If the start date remains on July 11, Branson would use this flight to advance Amazon founder Jeff Bezos nine days.
Blue Origin, Bezos' space company, had already announced a manned flight with the New Shepard rocket for July 20 in May.
The richest person in the world wants to take his brother and the 82-year-old former US pilot Wally Funk on a flight into space.
In May, Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity spaceplane completed a manned space test flight with two pilots.
The capsule was launched on board a carrier aircraft from the commercial spaceport Spaceport America in the US state of New Mexico.
The mother ship set off the »VSS Unity« at a height of almost 14 kilometers.
Then the space capsule accelerated with its own rocket engine and continued the flight.
aar / dpa