A mother-daughter duo won a lottery and going to space

18-year-old University of Aberdeen student Anastasia Myers and her mother Keisha Skahoff are set to become the first mother-daughter duo to go into space. They were selected to travel on the second commercial flight of Richard Branson's exploration company Virgin Galactic as a prize in a competition. Skahuoff saw an ad about the competition while traveling from Antigua to the UK on a Virgin Atlantic flight. Curious about the prize, Skahoff entered the contest with no expectation of winning.

"I filled in a form and then all of a sudden a few months later I got a letter saying that I had been selected from the top 20, then the top five, finally the winner," Skahoff was quoted as saying by the BBC.

Richard Branson's whole team came into my room one day and said 'You're a winner, you're going to space'." Mother and daughter were overwhelmed to know the news. Anastasia Myers said her decision to move from the Caribbean to the UK to study at a Scottish university led to the golden opportunity to go into space.

"If I hadn't chosen Aberdeen University today and if we hadn't had to burn huge logs to get visas, we might not be going into space today," she said. Myers is currently studying Philosophy and Physics at the University of Aberdeen and feels fortunate to have this opportunity.

Virgin Galactic Flight 02 is scheduled to depart New Mexico on Thursday (August 10). It will be the company's second commercial flight after its first flight in June and will reach an altitude of about 85 km carrying passengers. Besides the mother-daughter duo, John Goodwin, a former Olympian will also join the crew. He will become the second person with Parkinson's disease to go into space.

An astronaut is defined by both NASA and the US Air Force as someone who has flown at an altitude of 50 miles (80 km) or more. Virgin Galactic says it already has a long list of around 800 customers. Cost per seat is 2 lakh 50 thousand to 4 lakh 50 thousand US dollars.