SpaceShipOne Flight 17P

SpaceShipOne Flight 17P was the final and prize-winning flight of Scaled Composites' Tier One program. Brian Binnie piloted SpaceShipOne from Mojave Air and Space Port on October 4, 2004, after the vehicle was carried aloft by White Knight and released for its rocket-powered climb. The flight reached roughly 112 kilometers, comfortably above the 100-kilometer X Prize threshold. Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum summarizes the mission as a 24-minute suborbital flight with about three minutes of weightlessness, and identifies Binnie as the pilot of the October 4 flight. Because SpaceShipOne had already completed a successful competitive flight on September 29, Flight 17P satisfied the requirement to fly the same reusable spacecraft above 100 kilometers twice within two weeks. The achievement won the $10 million Ansari X Prize and made SpaceShipOne a landmark vehicle in privately developed human spaceflight.