Planet Earth from SpaceShipOne

On June 21st , pilot Mike Melvill made a historic flight in the winged craft dubbed SpaceShipOne -- the first private manned mission to space. The spaceship reached an altitude of just over 62 miles (100 kilometers) on a suborbital trajectory , similar to the early space flights in NASA's Mercury Program . So, how was the view ? A video camera on an earlier test flight that climbed 40 miles recorded this picture looking west over the southern California coast and the Earth's limb . In the foreground, the nozzle of SpaceShipOne's hybrid rocket is visible along with the edge of the wing in a “feathered” configuration for reentry. SpaceShipOne was designed and built by Burt Rutan and his company Scaled Composites to compete for the 10 million dollar X Prize .