Anastasia Mayers, an 18-year-old Aberdeen University student, and her mother Keisha Schahaff will be the first mother-daughter team to travel to space after winning a spot on Richard Branson’s exploration business Virgin Galactic’s second commercial mission in a prize draw. Schahaff was flying from Antigua to the United Kingdom on a Virgin Atlantic flight when she saw an advertisement for the competition. Schahaff entered the tournament because she was curious about the prize and had no intention of winning.
“I filled out this sweepstake, and then suddenly months later I’m getting correspondences saying that you’re a top 20 finalist, then a top five finalist, to becoming a winner,” Schahaff was quoted as saying by the BBC. “Suddenly, who’s walking into my yard? Richard Branson. The whole team just swarmed into my house, saying, ‘You’re the winner, you’re going to space’.” Schahaff said her daughter Anna looked at her and said she should be coming with her when the organizers asked who would join her in the space expedition.
“Anna looked at me, and she said, mum if anyone’s going to space with you it should be me.”
“Anna looked at me, and she said, mum if anyone’s going to space with you it should be me.” Mayers said her decision to travel from the Caribbean to the UK to study at the Scottish university may have led to the opportunity to go to space. “Had I not randomly chosen Aberdeen University and had we not had to take a massive detour to get my visa, we wouldn’t be going to space,” she said.
Mayers is currently studying philosophy and physics at the University of Aberdeen and said she was fortunate to have been given the opportunity. “There are so many other people like me who want to do something involving space but don’t think they have the opportunity to do that,” she said. “I’m proud to be part of this mission and how it will expand access for more people.”
The Virgin Galactic 02 trip is planned to depart from New Mexico on Thursday, August 10. It will be the company’s second commercial flight, following the first, which took off in June and reached an altitude of around 85 kilometers. Along with the mother-daughter team, veteran Olympic canoeist Jon Goodwin will be joining the crew. He will also be the second person with Parkinson’s disease to travel to space. Both NASA and the US Air Force define an astronaut as someone who has flown at least 50 miles (80 kilometers) in altitude. Virgin Galactic has revealed that it has already booked a backlog of 800 people, with most paying between $250,000 and $450,000 per seat, and that it hopes to eventually construct a large enough fleet to fly passengers.