A Virgin Galactic rocket plane blasted to the edge of space on Thursday, capping off years of difficult testing to become the first US commercial human flight to reach space since America’s shuttle program ended in 2011.

The test flight foreshadows a civilian space race that could kick off as soon as next year, with the British billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic battling other billionaire-backed ventures to be the first to offer suborbital flights to tourists who pony up the hefty fares.

Virgin’s airplane-like SpaceShipTwo took off on Thursday morning from California’s Mojave air and space port, about 90 miles (145km) north of Los Angeles.

Richard Branson, wearing a leather bomber jacket with a fur collar, attended the takeoff along with hundreds of spectators on a crisp morning in the California desert.

After the rocket plane topped 50-mile altitude – reaching what some agencies consider the edge of space – a crying Branson high-fived and hugged spectators.

“Take off! WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo have taken to the skies,” Branson said on Twitter.

Richard Branson, center, celebrates with pilots Rick ‘CJ’ Sturckow, left, and Mark ‘Forger’ Stucky, right. Photograph: John Antczak/AP

The high-altitude launch comes four years after the original SpaceShipTwo crashed during a test flight that killed the co-pilot and seriously injured the pilot, dealing a major setback to Virgin Galactic, a US offshoot of the London-based Virgin Group.

“We’ve had our challenges, and to finally get to the point where we are at least within range of space altitude is a major deal for our team,” George Whitesides, Virgin Galactic’s chief executive, told reporters during a facilities tour on Wednesday in Mojave, where workers could be seen making pre-flight inspections of the rocket plane.

While critics point to Branson’s unfulfilled space promises over the past decade, the maverick businessman told a TV interviewer in October that Virgin’s first commercial space trip with him onboard would happen “in months and not years”.

Thursday’s test flight had two pilots onboard, four Nasa research payloads and a mannequin named Annie as a stand-in passenger.

The flight landed safely back on Earth just over an hour after it took off. Virgin Galactic said it reached a height of 51.4 miles, and traveled at 2.9 times the speed of sound.

More than 600 people have paid or put down deposits to fly aboard Virgin’s suborbital flights, including the actor Leonardo DiCaprio and pop star Justin Bieber. A 90-minute flight costs $250,000.

Congrats to @VirginGalactic on SpaceShipTwo successfully flying to suborbital space with our four @NASA_Technology payloads onboard. With a good rocket motor burn, the mission went beyond the 50-mile altitude target. Learn more about our tech onboard: https://t.co/CnVFu1eSQz https://t.co/D1AhE1Uzxm — NASA (@NASA) December 13, 2018

Also vying for the space tourist market are ventures such as the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin.

Short sightseeing trips to space aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket are likely to cost around $200,000 to $300,000, at least to start, Reuters reported in July. Tickets will be offered ahead of the first commercial launch, and test flights with Blue Origin employees are expected to begin in 2019.

Other firms planning a variety of passenger spacecraft include Boeing Co, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s Stratolaunch.

In September, SpaceX said the Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa would be the company’s first passenger on a voyage around the moon on its forthcoming Big Falcon Rocket spaceship, tentatively scheduled for 2023.

According to Virgin, SpaceShipTwo is hauled to an altitude of about 45,000ft by the WhiteKnightTwo carrier airplane and released. The spaceship then fires its rocket motor to catapult it to at least 50 miles above Earth, high enough for passengers to see the curvature of the planet.

The 50-mile mark is high enough to earn astronaut wings from the air force and the Federal Aviation Administration, though other agencies define space as beginning at 62 miles above Earth.