After years of development in the desert north of Los Angeles, a gigantic, six-engined megajet with the wingspan of an American football field flew Saturday morning for the first time.
Stratolaunch Systems, the company founded in 2011 by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, conducted the first test flight of the world's largest plane.
Basically, Stratolaunch aircraft is a giant flying launch pad, designed to hurtle satellites into low Earth orbit. It aims to offer the military, private companies and even NASA itself a more economical way to get into space.
"Whatever the payload, whatever the orbit, getting your satellite into space will soon be as easy as booking an airline flight," said CEO Jean Floyd in 2018.
The aircraft's wingspan measures 385 feet -- wider than any airplane on the planet. From tip to tail, it's 238 feet long. It weighs half a million pounds. It's so big, it has two cockpits, one in each fuselage (but only one is used to fly the plane.)
"It's the world's biggest airplane. It's so huge, it seems like it shouldn't be able to fly," Jack Beyer, an aerospace and launch photographer for NASASpaceFlight.com, told CNN on Thursday.
He's excited to witness the beginnings of the space industry's rising trend: using jets to launch satellites.
Dozens of photographers, industry bloggers and aerospace enthusiasts gathered this week to glimpse the unique twin-fuselage plane.
"People are interested in the first flight of Stratolaunch because they want to see the future," Beyer said. "It's the same reason why people tune in each year to watch the Apple keynotes. People want to see what's next."