Virgin Galactic Plans Tours Into the Northern Lights

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No one can accuse Richard Branson of thinking small.

His ambitious Virgin Galactic Spaceport in New Mexico won’t be ready for operations until 2010, but that hasn’t stopped the maverick entrepreneur from announcing another equally large scale project. This time Branson wants to fly rich space tourists to watch the most spectacular light show in the universe – the Aurora Borealis, also known as the Northern Lights.

Northern Lights © nick_russill

Those who can afford a ringside seat to watch the light show (generated by the collision of charged particles with molecules of the Earth’s upper atmosphere) will be launched into space from a proposed space port to be built in the small town of Kiruna, in the Lapland region of Northern Sweden. The town’s extreme Arctic location ensures unparalleled views of the Aurora Borealis.

According to experts, tests have concluded that this launching of humans into the heart of an aurora is safe to do, and if all goes well, Virgin Galactic could well have regular Aurora Borealis package tours lined up in the future.

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