World's largest plane makes first test flight (Video)

The world’s largest plane with the longest wingspan completed successfully its first test flight over California’s Mojave Desert.
The white plane called Roc, which has a wingspan the length of an American football field and is powered by six engines on a twin fuselage, took to the air shortly before 7am Pacific time (14.00 GMT) and stayed aloft for more than two hours before landing safely back at the Mojave Air and Space Port.

“What a fantastic first flight,” Stratolaunch chief executive Jean Floyd said on the company’s website.
Earlier Mr Floyd had tweeted that the aircraft’s engines had been successfully tested before the maiden flight.
The plane is designed to drop rockets and other space vehicles weighing up to 500,000 pounds at an altitude of 35,000 feet and has been billed by the company as making satellite deployment as “easy as booking an airline flight”.
Saturday’s flight, which saw the plane reach a maximum speed of a little more than 300 per hour and altitudes of 5,200 metres, was meant to test its performance and handling qualities, according to Stratolaunch.
Allen, who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates in 1975, announced in 2011 that he had formed the privately funded Stratolaunch.
The company seeks to cash in on higher demand in coming years for vessels that can put satellites in orbit, competing in the US with other space entrepreneurs and industry stalwarts such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX and United Launch Alliance – a partnership between Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
Stratolaunch has said it intends to launch its first rockets from the Roc in 2020 at the earliest. Allen died in October 2018 while suffering from non-Hodgkins’ lymphoma, just months after the plane’s development was unveiled.