Mike Melvill, a South African test pilot and one of the pilots of SpaceShipOne, died on March 19, 2026, at age 85.
Born Michael Winston Melvill in Johannesburg, South Africa, he became known for piloting the experimental spaceplane on its first flight past the edge of space, flight 15P, on June 21, 2004. That flight made him the first commercial astronaut and the 435th person to go into space.
He also piloted SpaceShipOne’s flight 16P, the first competitive flight in the Ansari X Prize competition.
Michael Winston Melvill (November 30, 1940 – March 20, 2026) was a South African-born American world-record-breaking pilot and one of the test pilots for SpaceShipOne, the experimental spaceplane developed by Scaled Composites. Melvill piloted SpaceShipOne on its first flight past the edge of space, flight 15P on June 21, 2004, thus becoming the first commercial astronaut, and the 435th person to go into space. He was also the pilot on SpaceShipOne’s flight 16P, the first competitive flight in the Ansari X Prize competition.