Virgin Galactic has reached another milestone in space tourism. Its second flight test for SpaceShipTwo or SS2 has been completed successfully.

The spaceship reached a speed of Mach 1.43 -- 1,088.52 mph. It climbed to an altitude of 69,000 feet, the highest record achieved by any suborbital spacecraft. Founder Richard Branson has fully expressed his delight in a blog post about the milestone for the supersonic industry as he looks forward to the start of commercial service by next year.

Its suborbital spacecraft was carried to 46,000 feet by the WhiteKnightTwo (WK2) aircraft. Then the hybrid rocket engine of SS2 kicked in, pushing the craft up to 69,000 feet.

The only two lucky people who were on board were the two pilots, Clint Nichols and Mark Stucky. They are both connected to aerospace manufacturer Scaled Composites, which was founded by Burt Rutan. Currently, it is owned by the Northrop Grumman Corp, the designer of the SS2.

Designers eventually intend for the rocket to fire for a full 70 seconds, pushing the craft to 2,500 mph and an altitude of 364,000 feet. For the first set of planned space flights in 2014, 625 tickets have already been sold at $250,000 each.