An his­toric mo­ment for the Caribbean as a moth­er and daugh­ter from An­tigua and Bar­bu­da are the first space tourists from the re­gion to jour­ney to space and back to earth on the same day.

Keisha Scha­haff and her daugh­ter Anas­ta­tia May­ers ce­les­tial jour­ney be­gan their ce­les­tial jour­ney on­board Richard Bran­son’s Vir­gin Galat­i­ca VSS Uni­ty rock­et­plane at the Space­port Amer­i­ca in Truth or Con­se­quences, New Mex­i­co on Au­gust 10.

Scha­haff and May­ers are the first moth­er and daugh­ter and the 6th and 7th black women to trav­el to space. At eigh­teen years of age, May­ers is al­so the youngest per­son (by two weeks) to go to space.

Speak­ing at a Vir­gin Galat­i­ca press con­fer­ence af­ter the flight, Scha­haff said it was the most amaz­ing thing she has ever done.

“Look­ing at earth was the most amaz­ing,” she said.

“It was so com­fort­able; it was the best ride ever. I would love to do this again. I am still there right now.”

Her daugh­ter the youngest woman to trav­el to space added: “I was shocked at the things you can feel. It was in­cred­i­ble and I am still star struck.”

The ex­cit­ing jour­ney which was live-streamed from be­gin­ning to end al­lowed the world to view the pas­sen­gers from in­side the space­craft as it reached a max­i­mum al­ti­tude of near­ly 55 miles – near­ly five miles above the 50-mile al­ti­tude NASA and the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion recog­nise as the “bound­ary” of space.

Live streamed view­ing par­ties were held in both is­lands of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da as ex­cit­ed cit­i­zens gath­ered to sup­port their coun­try­women.

Prime Min­is­ter of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Gas­ton Brown de­scribed the event as a very sig­nif­i­cant one for his coun­try.

“This is cer­tain­ly a ma­jor achieve­ment, an achieve­ment that will help to in­spire great am­bi­tions of the An­tigua and Bar­bu­da peo­ple,” he said.

“I am very proud of the re­silience and courage of Keisha and her daugh­ter and we are just very hap­py.”

CEO of the An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Tourism Au­thor­i­ty who is at the watch par­ty said it is a very proud mo­ment for the coun­try adding: “We’re ex­cit­ed be­cause this is his­toric for us as a na­tion, the first moth­er and daugh­ter team to go in space. They are the first from the Caribbean.”

Scha­haff won two tick­ets worth US $450,000 each when she en­tered the Vir­gin Galac­tic and Omaze Sweep­stakes in Ju­ly 2021. She gift­ed one of the tick­ets to her daugh­ter.

Olympian Jon Good­win, 80, who com­pet­ed in the 1972 Mu­nich Games as a ca­noeist was al­so on­board. Good­win has Parkin­son’s and is the sec­ond per­son with the dis­ease to go to space.