The feat vaults the nearly 71-year-old past fellow billionaire and rival Jeff Bezos, who is planning to fly to space in a craft of his own nine days from now.

"The whole thing, it was just magical," a jubilant Mr Branson said after the trip home aboard the gleaming white space plane, named Unity. 

The brief, up-and-down flight — the rocket ship's portion took only about 15 minutes — was a splashy and unabashedly commercial plug for Virgin Galactic, which plans to start taking paying customers on rides next year.

With a crowd of more than 500 people watching, a twin-fuselage aircraft with Mr Branson's space plane attached underneath took off in the first stage of the flight.

Aboard were Mr Branson and five crew from his Virgin Galactic space-tourism company.

The space plane then detached from the mother ship at an altitude of about 13 kilometres and fired its engine in a bid to reach the edge of space at about 88 kilometres up. 

Spectators cheered, jumped into the air and embraced as the rocket plane touched down.

Mr Branson pumped his fists as he stepped out onto the runway and ran toward his family, bear-hugging his wife and children and scooping his three grandchildren up in his arms.

'Licence to thrill'

The London-born founder of Virgin Atlantic Airways wasn't supposed to fly until later this year but he assigned himself to an earlier flight after Mr Bezos announced plans to ride his own rocket into space from Texas on July 20, the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Mr Branson, who has kite-surfed the English Channel and attempted to circle the globe in a hot-air balloon, denied he was trying to beat Mr Bezos.

Before he climbed aboard, Mr Branson signed the astronaut log book and quipped: "The name's Branson. Sir Richard Branson. Astronaut Double-oh one. License to thrill."

One of Mr Branson's chief rivals in the space-tourism race among the world's richest men, SpaceX's Elon Musk, arrived in New Mexico to witness the flight, and wished Mr Branson via Twitter, "Godspeed!"

Mr Bezos also sent his wishes for a safe and successful flight, though he also took to Twitter to enumerate the ways in which be believes his company's rides will be better.

Mr Bezos' Blue Origin company intends to send tourists past the so-called Karman line 100 kilometres above Earth, which is is recognised by international aviation and aerospace federations as the threshold of space.

But NASA, the Air Force, the Federal Aviation Administration and some astrophysicists consider the boundary between the atmosphere and space to begin 80 kilometres up.

The risks to Mr Branson and his crew were underscored in 2007, when a rocket motor test in California's Mojave Desert left three workers dead, and in 2014, when a Virgin Galactic rocket plane broke apart during a test flight, killing one pilot and seriously injuring the other.

Ever the showman, Mr Branson insisted on a global live stream of the Sunday morning flight and invited celebrities and former space station astronauts to the company's Spaceport America base in New Mexico.

Virgin Galactic already has more than 600 reservations from would-be space tourists, with tickets initially costing $US250,00 ($334,000) apiece. Blue Origin is waiting for Mr Bezos' flight before announcing its ticket prices.

Mr Musk's SpaceX, which is already launching astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA and is building moon and Mars ships, is also competing for space tourism dollars.

SpaceX says capsules will do more than make brief, up-and-down forays; they will go into orbit around the Earth, with seats costing well into the millions, with the first private flight set for September.

Mr Musk himself has not committed to going into space anytime soon.

Source | AP