On June 21, 2004, the first privately funded human spaceflight, launched on SpaceShipOne. Discover space history 👉 https://trib.al/v2neUKA The ship flew 62.5 miles above Earth's surface -- just a few miles above the boundary of space -- for about 3 minutes before gliding back down to Earth. Because SpaceShipOne didn't make a complete orbit around the planet, it made what's known as a suborbital flight. The experimental aircraft was designed and built by a private company called Scaled Composite