Astronomy Picture of the Day . ... Credit Copyright: Scaled Composites Explanation: 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 spaceflights in NASA's Mercury Program . ... Publications with keywords: spacecraft - SpaceShipOne - spaceflight . ... A Landslide on Asteroid Vesta . ...