Spaceship One is in the air right now, riding on its carrier plane, White Knight, for its second suborbital flight, the first flight of its X-Prize attempt. Best of luck to them on this historic launch.

More links: SpaceflightNow SS1 Status Center here, for live text updates, and NASA TV has a live webcast. Discussion on Slashdot.

Update, 11:30am: Launched, lofted, and landed. There was a scary stability problem at the start: the craft entered a wicked roll for several seconds after its rocket fired. The rest of the flight seems to have gone smoothly, but that roll is an issue they’ll have to address before the next prize attempt on Monday.

Some tiny low-res screenshots from SS1’s own onboard videocam during the flight: