The world’s first private passenger spaceship passed another milestone towards its commercial lift-off yesterday, at a remote spaceport in the New Mexico desert.

The main runway at Spaceport Americ is found near the town of Las Cruces where the Virgin Galactic project is based.SpaceShipTwo, which could carry paying customers into suborbital space by early 2012, had its maiden flight in the California desert in March.

Yesterday, the aircraft – re-Christened the VSS Enterprise –staged a flypass high above the new 3.2-kilometre-long, ­60-metre-wide runway in tandem with its mothership, known as WhiteKightTwo or Eve.

“The completion of the runway at Spaceport America (is) a major milestone in the construction of the world’s first purpose-built commercial spaceport,” it said in a statement.

Virgin Galactic, which aims to become the world’s first ­company to promote space tourism, has already collected $45 million in deposits from more than 340 people who have reserved seats aboard the six-person craft.

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