An 18-year-old Aberdeen University student is gearing up for blast off as she heads to space with her mum.
Anastatia Mayers and her mother, Keisha Schahaff, 46, will board the VSS Unity tomorrow for the 90-minute trip to space.
It is a trip set to break several historic milestones, with the duo becoming the first people from the Caribbean to go into space and the first mother-daughter pair to reach for the final frontier onboard VSS Unity.
However, Miss Mayers, who is studying philosophy and physics, will be the second Aberdeen University student in space.
Miss Mayers added: “Philosophy and physics make an interesting combination, but it expresses both my love for science and my curiosity about how the world works.”
Bonding with first Scot in space
Mother and daughter, along with third passenger Jon Goodwin from Newcastle, an 80-year-old former Olympian will set off at 4pm (BST) on Thursday from New Mexico in the US in the mothership VMS Eve.
VSS Unity will then separate and take them into sub-orbital space, where they will experience around five minutes of weightlessness while looking back at Earth.
In preparation for the expedition, the passengers have been undergoing training at Spaceport America.
It was there Miss Mayers met chief pilot, Dave Mackay, the first native-born Scot to visit space in 2019. The two quickly bonded over their shared Scottish links and out-of-world thinking.
Miss Mayers and her mum won their tickets in a sweepstake that raised £1.7 million for the non-profit group Space for Humanity.
After winning her ticket in 2021, Ms Schahaff, who is an entrepreneur and health and wellness coach, said her own and her daughter’s dreams of space had inspired the entry into the competition.
The flight will be Virgin Galactic Holdings’ seventh spaceflight and second commercial spaceflight called Galactic 02. It will be livestreamed on VirginGalactic.com.
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