Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group, stepped off his space vessel on Sunday and described his brief amount of time beyond the planet as an “experience of a lifetime” at a post-flight ceremony with his space crew.

“Congratulations to all our wonderful team at Virgin Galactic for 17 years of hard, hard work to get us this far” the British billionaire said VSS Unity, their spacecraft, descended towards earth after completing the trip beyond this word. 

Upon touching down on earth, he said, “I have dreamt of this moment since I was a kid, but honestly nothing could prepare you for the view of Earth from space” while celebrating his trip with a bottle of champagne, according to reports from AFP. 

Touchdown occurred around 09:40 am Mountain Time (1540 GMT), about an hour after take-off, AFP reported.

Sunday’s launch was a part of a much bigger plan of space tourism, an area that is being explored by multiple billionaires, including former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who is also scheduled to fly to space later this month. 

After Sunday, Virgin Galactic plans two further flights, and then the start of regular commercial operations from early 2022. The ultimate goal is to conduct 400 flights per year, according to reports from AFP.

SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk, who is also known to be a space enthusiast, was present at the launch, and said in a tweet, “Congratulations, beautiful flight!”. 

For Sunday’s flight, Branson initiated an open-ended contest for people, offering them a chance to claim two tickets for the space flight, which left the passengers in a weightless situation for a few minutes.

Some 600 tickets have already been sold to people from 60 different countries — including Hollywood celebrities — for prices ranging from $200,000 to $250,000.

Branson hopes to expand that through the competition for free tickets, “so lots of people who couldn’t otherwise have afforded to go to space, go to space”, according to reports from AFP.

The 70-year-old has always been known to have an adventurous spirit and participates in multiple daring sports such as ballooning and skydiving.