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A first-of-its-kind flight. A one-of-a-kind experience.

Our unique and innovative Spaceflight System enables you and your fellow astronauts to enjoy the most thrilling and awe-inspiring journey of your life, in unparalleled comfort and ease.

VMS Eve is a custom-built, four-engine, dual-fuselage jet carrier aircraft with a unique high-altitude, heavy-payload capability. It is also the world’s largest all-carbon aviation vehicle in service.

Our hybrid propulsion system combines the inherent stability of a solid rocket motor and the controllability of a liquid rocket motor. It is simpler and safer by design.

Your individually size-adjusted seat has been built to enhance your comfort and experience during each stage of flight.

A minute of high-octane, high-g euphoria is followed by absolute silence, absolute space.

17 windows — more than any other commercial spacecraft in history – with built-in hand grabs to optimize zero-g viewing.

Astronauts frequently report a cognitive shift in awareness and perspective brought about by viewing the Earth from space. This has become known as the Overview Effect.

While in space, astronauts are free to leave their seats for the effortless freedom of zero gravity.

Virgin Galactic currently offsets emissions for each spaceflight, and we are always working towards innovations that make our flights and daily operations more sustainable.

Our engineering teams are hard at work to quickly bring more spaceships online and facilitate your spaceflight.

Our pilots go above and beyond.

As the spaceline for Earth, we’re pleased to offer you an elegant, spaceflight system designed for safety, reusability and customer experience. You’ll be in the expert hands of our highly experienced pilots, all with long flight careers behind them.

World-class safety.

At Virgin Galactic, safety has always been our North Star and an ethos that’s deeply embedded into our culture, evidenced by an exhaustive test flight program and highly experienced operational teams drawn from the world of aerospace and aviation.

The Virgin Galactic spaceflight system has been specifically designed to reduce and make risk more manageable, throughout the entire flight.

Vital to this is an air-launched, winged and piloted spaceship with a fully controllable propulsion system, enabling us to cut a flight short, safely and comfortably at any stage.

“Feeling the power of the motor behind me, and seeing the sky change from blue to black ahead – it was an experience unlike any I’ve ever had. While the speed and force was exhilarating, I felt safe and comfortable at all times.”

Sirisha Bandla -

Virgin Galactic Astronaut 004

Virgin Galactic successfully completes first fully crewed spaceflight

Virgin Galactic has announced its spaceship VSS Unity successfully reached space.

This was the spaceline’s fourth spaceflight and first test flight with a full crew in the cabin, including Virgin Group founder, Richard Branson .

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This was the spaceline’s fourth spaceflight and first test flight with a full crew in the cabin, including Virgin Group founder, Richard Branson.

VSS Unity achieved a speed of Mach 3 after being released from the mothership, VMS Eve, and reached space at an altitude of 53.5 miles.

One and a half hours after take-off, the spaceship touched down safely at Spaceport America – the world’s only purpose-built commercial spaceport. The crew reported feeling well and witnessed spectacular views of the Earth from space, while moving weightlessly about the cabin.

Michael Colglazier, CEO of Virgin Galactic, said:

“Today we took one giant leap closer to making the wonder of space travel a reality for anyone who shares that dream. We’re thrilled to introduce this transformative experience to the world and to have more Future Astronauts follow in the footsteps of today’s crew of mission specialists. We look forward to updating you on next steps once we’ve analysed the results from today’s successful flight. Looking ahead, we are on track with our test program, with two further flights planned this year, as we get closer to commercial space operations.”

Today’s flight was the fourth rocket-powered spaceflight by Virgin Galactic and the 22nd test flight of VSS Unity. The crew fulfilled a number of test objectives related to the cabin and customer experience, including:

Evaluating the commercial customer cabin

The views of Earth from space

The conditions for conducting research

The effectiveness of the five-day pre-flight training program at Spaceport America.

The first global livestream of the spaceflight experience was witnessed by audiences around the world. It gave a glimpse of the journey Virgin Galactic’s Future Astronauts can expect when the company launches commercial flight service following the completion of its test flight program.

My mission statement is to turn the dream of space travel into a reality - for my grandchildren, for your grandchildren, for everyone. Watch the launch of the next space age at 6 am PT | 9 am ET | 2 pm BST on https://t.co/1313b4RAKI @virgingalactic #Unity22 pic.twitter.com/JpqXx8cy04 — Richard Branson (@richardbranson) July 11, 2021

Richard Branson said: “I have dreamt about this moment since I was a child, but nothing could have prepared me for the view of Earth from space. We are at the vanguard of a new space age. As Virgin’s founder, I was honoured to test the incredible customer experience as part of this remarkable crew of mission specialists and now astronauts. I can’t wait to share this awe-inspiring experience with aspiring astronauts around the world.”

Branson continued, “Our mission is to make space more accessible to all. In that spirit, and with today’s successful flight of VSS Unity, I’m thrilled to announce Virgin Galactic’s new partnership with Omaze and Space for Humanity to inspire the next generation of dreamers. For so long, we have looked back in wonder at the space pioneers of yesterday. Now, I want the astronauts of tomorrow to look forward and make their own dreams come true.”

Congratulations to @richardbranson and @virgingalactic for dreaming so big! Now it’s your turn… You could make history and win two seats on one of the FIRST Virgin Galactic commercial spaceflights! ENTER NOW: https://t.co/WmZo2aixYb #VirginGalactic #RichardBranson #Omaze pic.twitter.com/9qLGKctmnw — Omaze (@omaze) July 11, 2021

Omaze is the leading online fundraising platform that offers the chance to win once-in-a-lifetime experiences and prizes and support charities around the world. As part of Virgin Galactic’s Omaze sweepstakes, a winning participant and their guest will receive seats aboard one of the company’s first commercial spaceflights. Every donation supports Space For Humanity , a nonprofit seeking to democratise space and send citizen astronauts of diverse racial, economic, and disciplinary backgrounds to space. For more information, to enter for your chance to win by August 31, and to read the full rules please visit Omaze.com/space .

The mission specialists in the cabin were Beth Moses, Chief Astronaut Instructor; Colin Bennett, Lead Flight Operations Engineer; Sirisha Bandla, Vice President of Government Affairs and Research Operations; and the Company’s Founder, Sir Richard Branson. The VSS Unity pilots were Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci, while Kelly Latimer and CJ Sturckow piloted VMS Eve.

Win two seats on one of the first Virgin Galactic flights to space with Omaze

Virgin Galactic announces first fully crewed spaceflight

Watch live: virgin galactic’s unity 22 spaceflight.

Highlights From Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic Flight

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Branson and the crew received astronaut wings after their successful trip to space.

Richard Branson finally got his trip to space on Sunday.

It has been a very long wait for Mr. Branson, the irreverent, 70-year-old British billionaire who leads a galaxy of Virgin companies. In 2004, he founded Virgin Galactic to provide adventurous tourists with rides on rocket-powered planes to the edge of space and back.

At the time, he thought commercial service would begin in two to three years. Instead, close to 17 years have passed. Virgin Galactic says it still has three more test flights to conduct, including the one on Sunday, before it can be ready for paying passengers.

Cars drove Mr. Branson and his crewmates to the plane on Sunday, and the flight took off on Sunday morning around 10:40 a.m. Eastern time from Spaceport America in New Mexico, about 180 miles south of Albuquerque.

The space plane separated from the carrier ship around 11:25 a.m. and ignited its engine for about 60 seconds, carrying Mr. Branson and the crew into space. Video footage from the live stream showed him and the crew experiencing weightlessness.

Minutes later, the plane began its return to Earth in a glide, and soon landed safely on the spaceport’s runway. Mr. Branson, speaking into a camera in the plane’s cabin during the glide, called it “an experience of a lifetime.”

More than an hour later, a giddy Mr. Branson took a stage with his fellow crewmates.

“The whole thing was magical,” he said.

Chris Hadfield , the Canadian astronaut whose performance of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” from the space station went viral some years ago, then pinned wings on the crewmates’ flight suits that officially designate them as astronauts.

— Kenneth Chang

What is Virgin Galactic’s space plane, and what did it do?

The rocket plane, a type called SpaceShipTwo, is about the size of an executive jet. In addition to the two pilots, there can be up to four people in the cabin. The particular SpaceShipTwo that flew on Sunday is named V.S.S. Unity.

To get off the ground, Unity was carried by a larger plane to an altitude of about 50,000 feet. There, Unity was released, and the rocket plane’s motor ignited. The acceleration made people on board feel a force up to 3.5 times their normal weight on the way to an altitude of more than 50 miles.

At the top of the arc, those on board were able to see the blackness of space as well as the curve of Earth from the plane’s windows. They also got out of their seats and experienced about four minutes of apparent weightlessness. Fifty miles up, Earth’s downward gravitational pull is essentially just as strong as it is on the ground; rather, the passengers were falling at the same pace as the plane around them.

The two tail booms at the back of the space plane then rotated up to a “feathered” configuration that created more drag and stability, allowing the plane to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere more gently. This configuration SpaceShipTwo like a badminton shuttlecock, which always falls with the pointy side oriented down, than a plane.

Still, the forces felt by the passengers on the way down were greater than on the way up, reaching six times the force of gravity.

Once the plane was back in the atmosphere, the tail booms rotated back down, and the plane glided to a landing.

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What will it cost to fly Virgin Galactic to space?

Not long after Richard Branson re-entered Earth’s atmosphere on Sunday, he and other employees of his Virgin Galactic venture boasted that the company would greatly expand opportunities for the general public to travel to space. For the moment, those otherworldly views and feelings of weightlessness will still be held in rarefied air.

A seat on one of the company’s spaceships originally cost $200,000 . The company later raised the price to $250,000 . It then stopped sales after a crash during a test flight in 2014. When the company resumes sales later this year, the price will probably rise again, said Michael Colglazier, Virgin Galactic’s chief executive.

“We’re here to make space more accessible to all,” Mr. Branson said on Sunday as he was presented with his astronaut wings after his milestone flight.

For a vast majority of Americans, the cost of such a trip is out of reach. In the future, Virgin Galactic and other spaceflight companies hope broadening opportunities to fly to space will bring down the cost of a ticket. But for now, primarily people with spare cash equivalent to the cost of some houses will be able to afford a few moments at the edge of space.

Nevertheless, the company estimated on Sunday that more than 600 people from some 60 countries had signed up for one of its flights. The first paying SpaceShipTwo passengers may begin flying in the next year, after the company completes two more test flights.

During Virgin Galactic’s livestream on Sunday, some space tourists-in-waiting spoke about how they were looking forward to taking the flights. They had been invited to watch Mr. Branson’s flight from Spaceport America in New Mexico. There was no discussion of the steep cost associated with space travel, which is not limited to Virgin Galactic.

An unnamed passenger paid $28 million to join the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos later this month when his rocket company, Blue Origin, is to launch its New Shepard rocket and capsule. The company has yet to announce the standard fare for a trip on its spacecraft when Mr. Bezos isn’t in the next seat.

While the price of a brief suborbital trip with Virgin Galactic or Blue Origin is expensive, trips even higher to orbit and beyond are downright, well, astronomical.

Three people paid $55 million each to Axiom Space in Houston to fly in SpaceX ’s Crew Dragon to the International Space Station as soon as early next year.

But not all trajectories to space will involve six or seven figures. On Sunday, Mr. Branson announced that Virgin Galactic would give away two tickets to space as part of a sweepstakes initiative with the charitable fund-raising platform Omaze.

No donation is required to win, according to Omaze, which said that a nonprofit organization, Space for Humanity, would seek to “democratize space and send citizen astronauts of diverse racial, economic and disciplinary backgrounds to space.”

“If you ever had a dream, now is the time to make it come true,” Mr. Branson said.

— Neil Vigdor and Kenneth Chang

Who were the crew members aboard the flight?

The pilots are David Mackay and Michael Masucci.

In addition to Mr. Branson, three Virgin Galactic employees joined the flight to evaluate how the experience will be for future paying customers. They were Beth Moses, the chief astronaut instructor; Colin Bennett, lead operations engineer; and Sirisha Bandla, vice president of government affairs and research operations.

On Sunday’s flight, Ms. Bandla was to conduct an experiment from the University of Florida that looks at how plants react to the changing conditions — particularly the swings in gravity — during the flight, part of research that could aid growing food on future long-duration space missions.

Stephen Colbert added a dash of comedy as Branson and crew headed toward space.

In this billionaire space race, slipping the surly bonds of Earth apparently isn’t enough — not without some glitz and a bevy of celebrities.

Richard Branson combined private spaceflight with show business on Sunday as he completed his highly-anticipated Virgin Galactic flight high above the New Mexico desert. He enlisted “The Late Show” host Stephen Colbert to introduce segments of a live streamed production, which was delayed around 90 minutes by the weather.

Mr. Colbert played up a humorous rivalry he has cultivated with the entrepreneur on his talk shows over the years, and joked about some of Mr. Branson’s failed business ventures, like Virgin Cola.

“Seriously, he lost money selling sugar water,” Mr. Colbert quipped. “All aboard.”

Later in the production, the Grammy-winning artist Khalid gave a performance in front of a small crowd on an outdoor stage at Spaceport America, which featured the release of his new song, “New Normal.” The musician, appearing in a sequined jacket as machines sprayed mist on a stage, performed three songs.

“Look how far we’ve came just as humanity,” he said during the live steam.

Around two hours before lifting off, Mr. Branson shared a photo of himself with a shoeless Elon Musk, a billionaire rival in the private conquest of space.

“Great to start the morning with a friend,” Mr. Branson said on Twitter .

In England, where he was knighted by Prince Charles in 2000 , the spotlight did not entirely belong to Mr. Branson, however. Mr. Branson’s space odyssey coincided with the men’s tennis final at Wimbledon on Sunday — historically billed for U.S. television audiences as “breakfast at Wimbledon.”

The flight also came just hours before England was set to take on Italy in the soccer finals of Euro 2020, which has drawn the collective attention of many people in Britain. Some on social media suggested that Mr. Branson’s timing was less than ideal .

The live stream production was not without its hiccups. The show’s hosts tried to interview Mr. Branson when the plane reached space, but the audio feed wasn’t working. After re-entry, many of his words were garbled as he tried to describe what it was like to visit space.

An earlier version of this article, using information from a Virgin Galactic video, misstated the day that Richard Branson was riding a bicycle to Spaceport America in New Mexico. He was riding it on July 5, not July 11, the day of his flight to space.

How we handle corrections

— Neil Vigdor

Why did Richard Branson take this risk?

Founding a space exploration company was perhaps an unsurprising step for Mr. Branson, who has made a career — and a fortune estimated at $6 billion — building flashy upstart businesses that he promotes with a showman’s flair.

What became his Virgin business empire began with a small record shop in central London in the 1970s before Mr. Branson parlayed it into Virgin Records, the home of acts like the Sex Pistols, Peter Gabriel and more. In 1984, he co-founded what became Virgin Atlantic to challenge British Airways in the field of long-haul passenger air travel. Other Virgin-branded airlines followed.

The Virgin Group branched out into other businesses as well, including a mobile-phone carrier, a passenger railroad and a line of hotels. Not all have performed flawlessly: Both Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Australia filed for insolvency during the pandemic last year, while few today remember his ventures into soft drinks , cosmetics or lingerie .

Virgin Galactic was announced to much fanfare in 2004 with the promise of creating a space tourism company with style. Virgin Orbit, a spinoff of that company that launches small satellites from a jumbo jet, came 13 years later. Virgin Orbit, now separate from Virgin Galactic, has carried payloads to orbit twice this year.

The space tourism company is of a piece with Mr. Branson’s penchant for highflying pursuits like skydiving and hot-air ballooning. And unlike many of the Virgin Group’s businesses that are actually minority investments or simply licensees, Virgin Galactic has been a major focus of Mr. Branson’s. He raised $1 billion for the space companies from Saudi Arabia, only to call off the deal in 2018 after the killing of the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. And in a regulatory filing, the company said it had benefited from his “personal network to generate new inquiries and reservation sales, as well as referrals from existing reservation holders.”

“We’ve spent 14 years working on our space program,” Mr. Branson said in a Bloomberg Television interview in 2018. “And it’s been tough, and space is tough — it’s rocket science.” He added that he had hoped to travel on one of Virgin Galactic’s flights by the end of that year.

Virgin Galactic joined the New York Stock Exchange in 2019 after merging with a publicly traded investment fund, giving it a potent source of new funds to compete with deep-pocket competitors — and publicity, with Mr. Branson marking its trading debut at the exchange in one of the company’s flight suits.

But while Virgin Galactic has sought to keep pace with the likes of Mr. Bezos’ Blue Origin, Mr. Branson has downplayed any rivalry between the two. “I know nobody will believe me when I say it, but honestly, there isn’t,” he told The Today Show earlier this week.

— Michael J. de la Merced

Is Virgin Galactic’s space plane safe?

The federal government does not impose regulations for the safety of passengers on a spacecraft like Virgin Galactic’s. Unlike commercial passenger jetliners, the rocket plane has not been certified by the Federal Aviation Administration. Indeed, the F.A.A. is prohibited by law from issuing any such requirements until 2023.

The rationale is that emerging space companies like Virgin Galactic need a “learning period” to try out designs and procedures and that too much regulation too soon would stifle innovation that would lead to better, more efficient designs.

Future passengers will have to sign forms acknowledging “informed consent” to the risks, similar to what you sign if you go skydiving or bungee jumping.

What the F.A.A. does regulate is ensuring safety for people not on the plane — that is, if anything does go wrong, that the risk to the “uninvolved public” on ground is minuscule.

The Virgin Galactic design already has an imperfect safety record. The company’s first space plane, the V.S.S. Enterprise, crashed during a test flight in 2014 when the co-pilot moved a lever too early during the flight, allowing the tail booms to rotate when they should have remained rigid. The Enterprise broke apart, and the co-pilot, Michael Alsbury, was killed. The pilot, Peter Siebold, survived after parachuting out of the plane.

The controls were redesigned so that the tail booms cannot be unlocked prematurely.

In 2019, Virgin Galactic came close to another catastrophe when a new metal thermal protection film was improperly installed, covering up holes that allow air trapped inside a horizontal stabilizer — the small horizontal wing on the tail of a plane — to flow out as the craft rises into the rarefied layers of the atmosphere. Instead, the pressure of the trapped air ruptured a seal along one of the stabilizers.

The mishap was revealed earlier this year in the book “Test Gods” by Nicholas Schmidle, a staff writer at The New Yorker. The book quotes Todd Ericson, then the vice president for safety and testing at Virgin Galactic, saying, “I don’t know how we didn’t lose the vehicle and kill three people.”

Who are some of the future passengers?

More than 600 people have signed up for flights. Virgin Galactic originally charged $200,000 a seat and then raised the price to $250,000 before suspending sales after the 2014 crash. The company has not said what it will charge when it resumes sales, but the expectation is that the cost will be higher.

During earlier test flights, the Virgin Galactic plane carried scientific experiments. One from University of Florida scientists, for example, tested imaging technologies that capture the reaction of plants — which genes are turned on and off — to the stresses of spaceflight.

In the future, scientists will be able to accompany their experiments. On this flight, Ms. Bandla of Virgin Galactic will perform an experiment that requires handling several tubes during the trip.

The Italian Air Force has purchased seats on future flights for scientific research, as has the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. It will be much easier, faster and cheaper to fly experiments on suborbital flights than to get them to the International Space Station.

Why do all of these passengers get to be called astronauts?

The United States Air Force and the Federal Aviation Administration put the boundary of outer space at 50 miles. The F.A.A. has granted astronaut wings to Virgin Galactic crew members who flew on earlier test flights.

Internationally, however, the altitude that marks the start of space is usually set at 100 kilometers, or just over 62 miles, what is known as the Karman line.

SpaceShipTwo was originally intended to rise above the 62-mile altitude, but difficulties during the development of the motor led to a less powerful but more reliable design that cannot propel the spacecraft that high.

When is Jeff Bezos’ flight, and how is it different?

On July 20, another billionaire is scheduled to take another rocket to the edge of space. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, founded his rocket company, Blue Origin , with a vision of millions of people living and working in space in the future.

But the company’s first vehicle, New Shepard, has much more modest ambitions. Like Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, it is designed to take people on short suborbital trips providing about four minutes of weightlessness.

Unlike SpaceShipTwo, New Shepard is a more traditional rocket, launched upward before the capsule detaches from a booster rocket. The booster returns to make a vertical landing, much as the larger Falcon 9 rockets operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX do, while the capsule descends back to the ground under a parachute.

New Shepard also rises above the 62-mile-high Karman line.

Blue Origin highlighted this fact, and several other features of New Shepard, in a tweet on Friday that compared the spacecraft with Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo.

From the beginning, New Shepard was designed to fly above the Kármán line so none of our astronauts have an asterisk next to their name. For 96% of the world’s population, space begins 100 km up at the internationally recognized Kármán line. pic.twitter.com/QRoufBIrUJ — Blue Origin (@blueorigin) July 9, 2021

Mr. Bezos later wished Mr. Branson and Virgin Galactic “a successful and safe flight tomorrow,” in a post on his Instagram account . He added, “Best of luck!”

What else is going on in private spaceflight?

TV and film projects in orbit are attracting the greatest attention so far. In the year ahead, the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, and a Russian broadcaster, Channel One, are behind an effort in the year ahead to send Yulia Peresild, an actress, and Klim Shipenko, a filmmaker, to the space station to make the movie “Challenge.” Ms. Peresild will play a surgeon sent to orbit to save the life of a Russian astronaut.

They will fly on a Russian Soyuz rocket. So will a Japanese fashion entrepreneur, Yusaku Maezawa , and Yozo Hirano, a production assistant. Their 12-day trip, scheduled to launch in December, is a prelude for a more ambitious around-the-moon trip Mr. Maezawa hopes to embark on in a few years in the giant SpaceX Starship rocket that is currently in development. His trip to the space station is being arranged by Space Adventures, a company that arranged eight similar visits for private citizens between 2001 and 2009.

The Discovery Channel has announced a reality TV show, “Who Wants to Be an Astronaut?” in which the winner gets to travel to the International Space Station. The eight-episode show, in development, is to run next year.

SpaceX has a couple of missions in the next 12 months that are scheduled to take private citizens to orbit . One is scheduled to launch in September and will carry Jared Isaacman, the billionaire founder of Shift4 Payments, and three other amateur astronauts , on a trip to orbit. A second, booked by the company Axiom Space, will carry three wealthy individuals and an astronaut working for the company to the International Space Station.

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Virgin Galactic successfully flies tourists to space for first time

Six individuals were aboard VSS Unity space plane, including first mother-daughter duo to venture to space together

Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity, the reusable rocket-powered space plane carrying the company’s first crew of tourists to space, successfully launched and landed on Thursday.

The mission, known as Galactic 02, took off shortly after 11am ET from Spaceport America in New Mexico .

Aboard the spacecraft were six individuals total – the space plane’s commander and former Nasa astronaut CJ Sturckow, the pilot Kelly Latimer, as well as Beth Moses, Virgin Galactic’s chief astronaut instructor who trained the crew before the flight.

The spacecraft also carryied three private passengers, including the health and wellness coach Keisha Schahaff and her 18-year-old daughter, Anastasia Mayers, both of whom are Antiguan.

According to Space.com, Schahaff won her seat onboard the Galactic 02 as part of a fundraising competition by Space for Humanity, a non-profit organization seeking to democratize space travel. Mayers is studying philosophy and physics at Aberdeen University in Scotland. Together, Schahaff and Mayers are the first mother-daughter duo to venture to space together.

“When I was two years old, just looking up to the skies, I thought, ‘How can I get there?’ But, being from the Caribbean, I didn’t see how something like this would be possible. The fact that I am here, the first to travel to space from Antigua, shows that space really is becoming more accessible,” Schahaff said in a statement last month.

The mission also marks the most women flown in a single mission to space.

Onboard the flight was also the former Olympian Jon Goodwin, who participated in the 1972 Olympics in Munich as a canoeist. At 80 years old, Goodwin was the second passenger with Parkinson’s disease and the first Olympian to embark on a trip to space.

“When I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2014, I was determined not to let it stand in the way of living life to the fullest. And now for me to go to space with Parkinson’s is completely magical,” he said in a news release. “I hope this inspires all others facing adversity and shows them that challenges don’t have to inhibit or stop them from pursuing their dreams,” Goodwin said .

Galactic 02 is a suborbital flight. However, despite VSS Unity not reaching orbit, the trajectory allows passengers to experience several minutes of weightlessness at an altitude high enough for them to see the Earth’s curvature, Space.com explains .

Following liftoff, Virgin Galactic’s carrier plane VMS Eve transported VSS Unity to an altitude of about 44,300ft. Eve then dropped Unity, which then fired its own rocket motor and ascended to suborbital space. Passengers onboard experienced approximately 3Gs.

Live footage inside the spacecraft showed the passengers unstrapping themselves from their seats and peering out down to Earth through the windows as they floated throughout the spacecraft.

In a press conference after the flight, Schahaff recounted her experience, saying: “Looking at Earth was the most amazing … It was so comfortable. It really was the best ride ever. I would love to do this again.

“This experience has given me this beautiful feeling that if I can do this, I can do anything,” she added.

Mayers, who is the second-youngest person to go to space, said: “I was shocked at the things that you feel. You are so much more connected to everything than you would expect to be. You felt like a part of the team, a part of the ship, a part of the universe, a part of Earth. It was incredible and I’m still starstruck.”

To Goodwin, the experience was far more dramatic than he expected.

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“The pure acceleration, Mach 3 [2,301mph, 3,378 ft per second] in eight and a half seconds was completely surreal. The re-entry was a lot more dramatic than I imagined it would be. In fact, I would have said it was out of control if I didn’t know anything different,” he said.

“It was a completely surreal experience. But the most impressive thing was looking at Earth from space. The pure clarity was very moving, quite surreal. It was without a doubt the most exciting day of my life,” he added.

In a statement released following the flight, Sturckow said: “It is a surreal and humbling experience to have flown Unity today. The wonder and excitement of spaceflight never loses its magic.”

Latimer echoed similar sentiments, saying: “In my entire career, from the Air Force Academy to being a test pilot for Nasa, nothing tops what I have just experienced at the controls of VSS Unity. Going to space today fulfilled an ambition I’ve had since I was a child.”

The Virgin Galactic founder, Sir Richard Branson, also hailed the flight, tweeting: “Today we flew three incredible private passengers to space: Keisha Schahaff, Anastatia Mayers and Jon Goodwin. Congratulations Virgin Galactic commercial astronauts 011, 012 and 013 – welcome to the club!”

Despite Galactic 02 being Virgin Galactic’s second commercial spaceflight mission, it is the first flight to carry private customers. In June, Galactic 01 carried three crew members from the Italian air force and the National Research Council of Italy.

In July 2021, Branson traveled to space and back onboard the VSS Unity, a mission that marked the billionaire’s entry into the new era of space tourism helmed by other billionaires including the SpaceX founder, Elon Musk, and Blue Origin founder, Jeff Bezos.

According to Virgin Galactic, the company has already booked a backlog of about 800 customers. Tickets have ranged from $250,000 to $450,000.

Galactic 03, the company’s third commercial spaceflight, is planned for September.

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Virgin Galactic’s first space tourists finally soar, an Olympian and a mother-daughter duo

Virgin Galactic rocketed to the edge of space with its first tourists Thursday, including a former British Olympian who bought his ticket 18 years ago and a mother-daughter duo from the Caribbean. (August 10) (Production Marissa Duhaney)

This photo provided Virgin Galactic shows passengers during Virgin Galactic’s first space tourism flight on Thursday Aug. 10, 2023. Virgin Galactic rocketed to the edge of space with its first tourists Thursday. The space plane glided back to a runway landing at Spaceport America in the New Mexico desert, after a brief flight that gave passengers a few minutes of weightlessness.(Virgin Galactic via AP)

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Virgin Galactic’s rocket-powered plane Unity 22, lands after a short flight to the edge of space at Spaceport America, near Truth or Consequences, N.M., Thursday, Aug. 10, 2023. Virgin Galactic is taking its first space tourists on a long-delayed rocket ship ride. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)

Virgin Galactic’s rocket-powered plane Unity 22, left, flies past its mothership Eve on its way to the edge of space after taking off from Spaceport America, near Truth or Consequences, N.M., Thursday, Aug. 10, 2023. Virgin Galactic is taking its first space tourists on a long-delayed rocket ship ride. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)

Virgin Galactic’s mothership Eve, carrying the rocket-powered plane Unity 22, flies after taking off from Spaceport America, near Truth or Consequences, N.M., Thursday, Aug. 10, 2023. Virgin Galactic is taking its first space tourists on a long-delayed rocket ship ride. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)

Space tourists, from left, Anastatia Mayers, Jon Goodwin and Keisha Schahaff pose for photos before boarding their Virgin Galactic flight at Spaceport America, near Truth or Consequences, N.M., Thursday, Aug. 10, 2023. Virgin Galactic is taking its first space tourists on a long-delayed rocket ship ride. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)

Guests wave flags of Antigua and Barbuda while watching the return of Virgin Galactic’s rocket-powered plane Unity at Spaceport America, near Truth or Consequences, N.M., Thursday, Aug. 10, 2023. Virgin Galactic is taking its first space tourists on a long-delayed rocket ship ride, including a British former Olympian and a mother-daughter duo from the Caribbean island. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)

Space tourists, from left, Anastatia Mayers, Jon Goodwin and Keisha Schahaff walk to the tarmac before boarding their Virgin Galactic flight at Spaceport America, near Truth or Consequences, N.M., Thursday, Aug. 10, 2023. Virgin Galactic is taking its first space tourists on a long-delayed rocket ship ride. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)

Virgin Galactic’s mothership Eve, carrying the rocket-powered plane Unity 22, takes off from Spaceport America, near Truth or Consequences, N.M., Thursday, Aug. 10, 2023. Virgin Galactic is taking its first space tourists on a long-delayed rocket ship ride. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)

TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES, N.M. (AP) — Virgin Galactic rocketed to the edge of space with its first tourists Thursday, a former British Olympian who bought his ticket 18 years ago and a mother-daughter duo from the Caribbean.

The space plane glided back to a runway landing at Spaceport America in the New Mexico desert, after a brief flight that gave passengers a few minutes of weightlessness.

This first private customer flight had been delayed for years; its success means Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic can now start offering monthly rides, joining Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX in the space tourism business.

“That was by far the most awesome thing I’ve ever done in my life,” said Jon Goodwin, who competed in canoeing in the 1972 Olympics.

Goodwin, 80, was among the first to buy a Virgin Galactic ticket in 2005 and feared, after later being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, that he’d be out of luck. Since then he’s climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and cycled back down, and said he hopes his spaceflight shows others with Parkinson’s and other illnesses that ”it doesn’t stop you doing things.”

Ticket prices were $200,000 when Goodwin signed up. The cost is now $450,000.

He was joined on the flight by sweepstakes winner Keisha Schahaff, 46, a health coach from Antigua, and her daughter, Anastatia Mayers, 18, a student at Scotland’s University of Aberdeen. They high-fived and pumped their fists as the spaceport crowd cheered their return.

“A childhood dream has come true,” said Schahaff, who took pink Antiguan sand up with her. Added her daughter: “I have no words. The only thought I had the whole time was ‘Wow!’ ”

With the company’s astronaut trainer and one of the two pilots, it marked the first time women outnumbered men on a spaceflight, four to two.

Cheers erupted from families and friends watching below when the craft’s rocket motor fired after it was released from the twin-fuselage aircraft that had carried it aloft. The rocket ship’s portion of the flight lasted about 15 minutes and it reached 55 miles (88 kilometers) high.

It was Virgin Galactic’s seventh trip to space since 2018, but the first with a ticket-holder. Branson, the company’s founder, hopped on board for the first full-size crew ride in 2021. Italian military and government researchers soared in June on the first commercial flight. About 800 people are currently on Virgin Galactic’s waiting list, according to the company.

In contrast to Virgin Galactic’s plane-launched rocket ship, the capsules used by SpaceX and Blue Origin are fully automated and parachute back down.

Like Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin aims for the fringes of space, quick ups-and-downs from West Texas. Blue Origin has launched 31 people so far, but flights are on hold following a rocket crash last fall. The capsule, carrying experiments but no passengers, landed intact.

SpaceX, is the only private company flying customers all the way to orbit, charging a much heftier price, too: tens of millions of dollars per seat. It’s already flown three private crews. NASA is its biggest customer, relying on SpaceX to ferry its astronauts to and from the International Space Station. since 2020.

People have been taking on adventure travel for decades, the risks underscored by the recent implosion of the Titan submersible that killed five passengers on their way down to view the Titanic wreckage. Virgin Galactic suffered its own casualty in 2014 when its rocket plane broke apart during a test flight, killing one pilot. Yet space tourists are still lining up, ever since the first one rocketed into orbit in 2001 with the Russians.

Branson, who lives in the British Virgin Islands, watched Thursday’s flight from a party in Antigua. He was joined by the country’s prime minister, as well as Schahaff’s mother and other relatives.

“Welcome to the club,” he told the new spacefliers via X, formerly Twitter.

Several months ago, Branson held a virtual lottery to establish a pecking order for the company’s first 50 customers — dubbed the Founding Astronauts. Virgin Galactic said the group agreed Goodwin would go first, given his age and his Parkinson’s.

This story has been updated to correct introductory price to $200,000, not $250,000.

Dunn reported from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Who is Virgin Galactic and what do they do?

Virgin Galactic is offering suborbital flights to anyone with pockets deep enough to buy a seat, and there is a lengthy waitlist.

• Ticket price

Virgin Galactic plane

• Launch site

Virgin Galactic plane development

• Next flight

Additional resources

Bibliography.

Virgin Galactic is a private space tourism company founded by billionaire businessman Richard Branson in 2004. 

Branson registered the Virgin Galactic business name in 1999 , and it is included in over 50 Branson-owned companies that carry the Virgin brand, not least of which has included an airline, hotel chain and cellphone service provider.

The Ansari X P r ize competition at the turn of the millennium brought Virgin Galactic into the spotlight after Branson backed the winning SpaceShipOne designed by Burt Rutan and his company Scaled Composites. 

The X Prize offered $10 million to the first non-government organization to launch two consecutive crewed spaceflights in as many weeks on a reusable vehicle, and SpaceShipOne took the purse with flights between September and October 2004. That same year, Virgin Galactic began advertising flights to space beginning at $200k, per seat, on an updated version of SpaceShipOne, SpaceShipTwo, to be manufactured by Scaled Composites for commercial use. 

Related: Do space tourists really understand the risk they're taking?

How much is a Virgin Galactic flight?

In 2004, Virgin Galactic began advertising flights to space beginning at $200k, per seat, on an updated version of SpaceShipOne, SpaceShipTwo, to be manufactured by Scaled Composites for commercial use. 

Now, that ticket price sits at $450k , and as of May 2023, Virgin Galactic has yet to fly any customers, though that may not remain the case much longer. After nearly twenty years and a waitlist of more than 700 people, the company finally appears on a trajectory to cross a few eager would-be astronauts' names off the list — and "astronauts," in this case, is a bit of a contentious term, for some. 

Talk of spaceflight and vehicle reusability these days normally conjures images of capsules parachuting through the clouds, or SpaceX Falcon 9 boosters rocketing back to Earth to land and launch again. 

Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser spaceplane shares some similarities with Scaled Composites' SpaceShip line, such as its winged design and aerodynamic flight return, but the technique used by SpaceShipOne and Virgin's subsequent spaceplane models to reach space is unique amongst its contemporary rivals, though not entirely novel.

For its three crewed flights to space (including a June 2004 test flight ahead of the two X Prize launches), SpaceShipOne took off from a conventional runway attached to a single-cabin carrier aircraft called WhiteKnight. 

At around 50,000 feet (15,000 meters), WhiteKnight releases SpaceShipOne, which drops to ignite its engine and fly the rest of the way to space. That is, space according to some. 

SpaceShipOne and SpaceShipTwo are both designed to fly sub-orbitally. Meaning that, while they are able to reach an altitude high enough to be considered outer space, they don't travel fast enough to achieve orbit around the planet. Orbital velocity for low Earth orbit (LEO) is around 17,500 mph (28,000 kph), and suborbital flights aboard SpaceShips One and Two don't typically exceed Mach 3, or 2,225 mph (3,540 kph).

NASA and the U.S. Space and Air Forces recognize the line between outer space and planet Earth to be at an altitude of 50 miles (80 kilometers). However, the international space community maintains different standards. The rest of the world recognizes the Kármán line , as its known, as the border with space, which sits at 62 miles (100 kilometers) high. And thus, with a 12-mile difference between them, the debate over who has or hasn't been to space, and therefore who does or does not qualify as an "astronaut," persists. 

SpaceShipOne's three flights each broke the Kármán line and left no question over the spacecraft's success. However, each of SpaceShipTwo's suborbital flights to date has only crossed the 50-mile mark. 

It's high enough to see the curvature of the earth, and the utter blackness of space, and the length of the flights allows passengers several minutes to experience weightlessness . 

A similar launch technique was implemented by NASA during America's first ventures to bridge the gaps of flight between Earth's atmosphere and outer space. The space agency developed the X-15 hypersonic plane in the 1950s, which was carried into the sky strapped to the wing of a Boeing B-52 Stratofortress aircraft, and then dropped for engine ignition at altitude, using the same principles Scaled Composites' SpaceShip design would use over a half-century later. 

Eight of the twelve X-15 pilots earned astronaut wings, with some flights taking the aircraft up to 67 miles (108 kilometers) in altitude. So far, everyone who's flown with Virgin Galactic has received their astronaut wings, though a few are accompanied by an asterisk*. 

Where does Virgin Galactic launch from?

In December 2005, Virgin Galactic struck a deal with the state of New Mexico to build a $225 million taxpayer-funded launch center known as Spaceport America , which serves as the company's headquarters. From there, Virgin Galactic launches its SpaceShipTwo missions, but they have been few and seldomly as the company and spacecraft struggled with development issues and unfortunately, fatal accidents that delayed SpaceShipTwo's debut for a number of years. 

A 2007 explosion at the Mojave Air and Space Port, in California, during a SpaceShipTwo propellant flow test, killed three Scaled Composites' workers and injured three others. This halted spacecraft production to allow for an investigation, which ultimately found the company at fault .

Even without the spacecraft ready, WhiteKnightTwo, the redesigned carrier aircraft for SpaceShipTwo was unveiled and began test flights in December 2008. The ship was dubbed the "VMS Eve," and featured an extra-wide wingspan with dual fuselages and pilot cabins on opposite sides of the vessel's SpaceShipTwo ferry.

SpaceShipOne was designed for a crew of three. The upgraded SpaceShipTwo features room for a two-pilot cockpit, and a passenger cabin to seat up to six. Finally, in December 2009, a year after the reveal of the redesigned WhiteKnightTwo, and five years after the spacecraft's initial announcement, Virgin Galactic premiered the VSS Enterprise, the first of its SpaceShipTwo fleet. 

The Enterprise performed its first atmospheric rocket-powered flight test in July 2010, spending over six hours in the air. Adjustments to the vessel and more delays put SpaceShipTwo's next test flight off until the Spring of 2013, with two more successful test flights to follow in September 2013 and January 2014.

However, a flight in October of that year ended in the destruction of the SpaceShipTwo VMS Enterprise, sustaining injuries to its pilot, and the tragic death of its co-pilot. Following an investigation , the National Transportation Safety Board ruled the cause of the crash as pilot error and faulted co-pilot Michael Alsbury for having deployed SpaceShipTwo's "feathering" re-entry system too early. The report also faults Scaled Composites for inadequate pilot training, stating the company, "did not ensure that the accident pilots and other SS2 test pilots adequately understood the risks of unlocking the feather early."

The incident grounded Virgin Galactic for two more years. 

Virgin Galactic's next SpaceShipTwo vehicle from Scaled Composites was named VSS Unity and flew its first test flight in September 2016. SpaceShipTwo's first flight since the VSS Enterprise crash lasted nearly four hours and saw the spaceplane reach altitudes of 50,000 feet (15,000 meters). Three more powered test flights of VSS Unity's engine in April, May and July, 2018 each brought the craft higher and higher, until its flight at the end of the year when SpaceShipTwo reached a major milestone.

On December 18, 2018, VSS Unity made SpaceShipTwo's first suborbital flight , reaching an altitude of 51.4 miles (82.7 kilometers). In turn, the mission's pilot Mark Stucky received his astronaut wings.

VSS Unity's next four suborbital flight attempts were all flown by Virgin Galactic's Chief Pilot Dave Mackay. Of the four flights between February 2019 and July 2021, all but one were successfully flown past NASA's not-quite-Kármán line. A December 12, 2020 flight was aborted prior to SpaceShipTwo's engine ignition, and Mackay and co-pilot and veteran NASA astronaut Fred Sturckow were able to return in the vehicle safely. 

Virgin Galactic founder Branson boarded VSS Unity himself for the spacecraft's fourth suborbital flight in July 2021, which also included Virgin Galactic employee test pilots and engineers. That flight was also a success but did not go over without incident. During flight, SpaceShipTwo deviated from its intended course, later triggering a short, but cumbersome investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). 

Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites spent another year and a half making improvements to VSS Unity, all while manufacturing another SpaceShipTwo for its fleet. The new model, SpaceShip III , was revealed in March 2021, and named VSS Imagine. 

VSS Unity flew again on May 25, 2023, ending another hiatus for the vehicle, and possibly ushering in a new era for Virgin Galactic and SpaceShipTwo. Unity's most recent flight saw another all-employee crew from Virgin Galactic aboard the spacecraft for a fifth successful suborbital flight. 

Next Virgin Galactic flight

Now, the company is imminently poised to begin commercial operations in June 2023. "We think if all this goes well, we'll be ready to fly our first commercial flight in June," Virgin Galactic president of spaceline missions and safety Mike Moses told Space.com before the May 25 flight. That first mission will be a research mission for the Italian Air Force, Moses said. 

After that, Virgin Galactic is striving for a once-a-month flight cadence, with the goal to increase that as time goes on. 

Learn more about the space tourism company on Virgin Galactic's official website and explore their spacecraft fleet in more detail . Keep up to date with the latest Virgin Galactic news by following them on Twitter .  

In-Flight Breakup During Test Flight Scaled Composites SpaceShipTwo, N339SS Near Koehn Dry Lake, California October 31, 2014. NTSB. https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/AAR1502.pdf

NASA. X-15 to the edge of Space Poster. NASA. https://www.nasa.gov/stem-ed-resources/X-15_Poster.html

Reserve your place in history. Virgin Galactic | Pricing. https://brochure.virgingalactic.com/pricing/

Sir. Richard Branson. Concordia. https://www.concordia.net/community/sir-richard-branson/

SpaceShipOne makes history: First private manned mission to space. Scaled composites: SpaceShipOne. https://web.archive.org/web/20101006112217/http://scaled.com/projects/tierone/spaceshipone_makes_history_first_private_manned_mission_to_space

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Josh Dinner is Space.com's Content Manager. He is a writer and photographer with a passion for science and space exploration, and has been working the space beat since 2016. Josh has covered the evolution of NASA's commercial spaceflight partnerships, from early Dragon and Cygnus cargo missions to the ongoing development and launches of crewed missions from the Space Coast, as well as NASA science missions and more. He also enjoys building 1:144 scale models of rockets and human-flown spacecraft. Find some of Josh's launch photography on Instagram and his website , and follow him on Twitter , where he mostly posts in haiku.

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Relive Virgin Galactic's Suborbital Flight - See What It Was Like For The Passengers

Posted: April 26, 2024 | Last updated: April 26, 2024

Experience Virgin Galactic Unity's Galactic 02 flight with these amazing views from inside and out of suborbital space plane VSS Unity. Passengers: Jon Goodwin, Keisha Schahaff and Anastatia Mayers. Crew: Commander C.J. Sturckow, pilot Kelly Latimer and Chief Astronaut Instructor Beth Moses. Credit: Space.com | footage courtesy: Virgin Galactic | edited by Steve Spaleta Music: Far Far Far by Bonnie Grace / courtesy of Epidemic Sound

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Virgin Galactic Announces Date of First Quarter 2024 Financial Results and Conference Call

Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: SPCE) (“Virgin Galactic” or the "Company”) today announced that it will report its financial results for the first quarter 2024 following the close of the U.S. markets on Tuesday, May 7, 2024. Virgin Galactic will host a conference call to discuss the results that day at 2:00 p.m. Pacific Time (5:00 p.m. Eastern Time).

A live webcast and replay of the conference call will be available on the Company’s Investor Relations website at investors.virgingalactic.com .

About Virgin Galactic

Virgin Galactic is an aerospace and space travel company, pioneering human spaceflight for private individuals and researchers with its advanced air and space vehicles. Scale and profitability are driven by next generation vehicles capable of bringing humans to space at an unprecedented frequency with an industry-leading cost structure. You can find more information at https://www.virgingalactic.com/ .

For Investor Relations inquiries: Eric Cerny – Vice President, Investor Relations [email protected]

For Media inquiries: Aleanna Crane – Vice President, Communications [email protected]

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240423581485/en/

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Virgin Galactic proposes reverse stock split

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WASHINGTON — Virgin Galactic will ask shareholders to approve a reverse stock split intended to boost the falling share price of the suborbital spaceflight company.

The company released April 18 a proxy statement and notice of its annual meeting , scheduled for June 12. The statement includes the list of proposals the company will ask shareholders to vote on at the meeting.

One proposal will ask shareholders to approve a series of amendments to its certificate of incorporation to perform a reverse stock split of between 1-for-2 and 1-for-20. That would convert anywhere from 2 to 20 existing shares of Virgin Galactic stock into one new share, with the exact ratio and timing of the reverse split to be determined by the company’s board.

The reverse split would have the effect of increasing the share price. Such splits are often done to comply with listing requirements on stock exchanges, which typically require shares to trade at prices of at least $1. Virgin Galactic shares closed April 18 at $0.97 and earlier in the day traded at $0.90, a 52-week low.

In the proxy statement, the company said the board backed the amendments for the reverse stock split “with the primary purpose of improving the perception of our common stock as an investment security, resetting our stock price to more normalized trading levels in the face of potentially extended market dislocation and decreasing price volatility for our common stock, as small price movements currently may cause relatively large percentage changes in our stock price.”

The filing also acknowledges that the reverse stock split would also address any concerns the stock could be delisted on the New York Stock Exchange, which requires a minimum share price of $1 over a 30-day period. “The Board intends to effect the Reverse Stock Split only if it believes that a decrease in the number of shares outstanding is in the best interests of the Company and our stockholders and is likely to improve the trading price of our common stock and improve the likelihood that we will be able to maintain our listing on the NYSE.”

The company’s share price has declined gradually since last June, when the company reached a 52-week high of about $6 a share shortly before the first commercial flight of its VSS Unity suborbital spaceplane. In November , Virgin Galactic announced it would retire Unity by mid-2024 to devote its resources to the production of its next-generation Delta-class vehicle, which the company expects to enter commercial service in 2026.

Virgin Galactic went public in 2019 through a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merger and share prices peaked at more than $50 per share at times in 2021. Other space companies that subsequently went public through SPAC mergers, including Astra, Momentus and Spire, have also performed reverse stock splits to maintain their listings.

Jeff Foust writes about space policy, commercial space, and related topics for SpaceNews. He earned a Ph.D. in planetary sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a bachelor’s degree with honors in geophysics and planetary science... More by Jeff Foust

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Simple Flying

Unlikely to fly again: 5 fast facts about virgin orbit's novel launcherone vehicle.

Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne was a failed attempt to enter the growing satellite launch market.

• Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne failed after 6 launches, leaving the booming small satellite industry without a key player.
• The Cosmic Girl, once carrying LauncherOne, has been sold to Stratolaunch for their Talon project.
• The collapse of Virgin Orbit marks the end of an era in the private space race, with other companies forging ahead.

Space can be a lucrative market, and the demand for launching satellites (particularly small satellites) into space is a rapidly growing industry. Virgin Orbit hoped to tap into this market with its LauncherOne two-stage orbital launch vehicle. Just as Boeing 747s were selected to carry the Space Shuttles (starting with the prototype, Enterprise ), a modified 747 was used to carry Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne. However, after failed launches and increased financial pressure, Virgin Orbit collapsed into bankruptcy meaning that LauncherOne is not likely to fly again.

1 Boeing 747-400 Cosmic Girl

The cosmic girl served as the mothership for the launcherone but it has been sold and will now carry stratolaunch's talon..

Cosmic Girl is the Boeing 747 400 aircraft purchased by Virgin Orbit in 2015 to be the mothership launch platform for LauncherOne (Virgin Orbit was spun off in 2017). Cosmic Girl flew for Virgin Orbit for 14 years and completed over 8,200. The first launch attempt was made in May 2020, but it was a failure. The second and successful launch took place in January 2021.

After Virgin Orbit's bankruptcy, Cosmic Girl was sold to Stratolaunch to be used as a launch platform for the company's Talon-A reusable hypersonic testbed. It is currently undergoing modifications and is expected to be operational in the first half of 2024. The aircraft has been renamed the "Spirit of Mojave."

Virgin Orbit Shut Down After Boeing 747 Rocket Launch Failure

2 six launches, five in the usa, one in cornwall, england.

LaunchOne had six launches between 2020 and 2023. Five were at the Mojave Air and Space Port in the United States, and the sixth one was at Spaceport Cornwall, England. The first launch on 25 May 2020 was a demo with an inert test payload, but it failed after a successful release and ignition on the first stage. It failed due to a high-pressure propellant line braking and stopping liquid oxygen flow to the engine.

The next launch occurred on 17 January 2021, when 10 NASA-sponsored CubeSats were launched. This was followed by more successful launches on 30 June 2021, 13 January 2020, and 2 July 2022, when more CubeSats were put into orbit (the 2 July launch included Space Force satellites). The last launch came on 9 January 2023 at Spaceport Cornwall and ended with failure.

3 Final launch, first for Britain

Virgin orbit's launcherone became the first satellite rocket to launch from the united kingdom, but the mission failed..

The sixth and final launch for LauncherOne took place in January 2023. The launch failed and triggered Virgin Orbit's collapse, but it was also the first rocket launched from the United Kingdom. The BBC stated that the mission had been billed as a major milestone for UK space and the birth of a home-grown launch industry.

The UK would like to become a global player in the sector of building rockets, creating new spaceports, and manufacturing satellites. Unfortunately, the mission was a failure for the UK and Virgin Orbit, and the satellites LauncherOne was carrying couldn't be released and were lost.

Virgin Orbit Boeing 747 Lands In UK For Start Me Up Mission

4 a small satellite launcher, the small satellite launch industry is burgeoning around the world, and virgin orbit was one in a long list of start-ups trying to get into the market..

LauncherOne was designed to carry smallsat payloads of up to 660 lbs or 300 kg into Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO). Smallsat refers to small satellites of low mass and size (normally less than 2,600 lbs). Virgin Orbit noted that small satellites have huge potential to improve people's lives - helping to connect everyone worldwide.

The development and failure of LauncherOne showed how satellites have gotten smaller and cheaper, but satellite launches remain a challenge. Companies often have to wait months to rideshare their satellites on larger rockets with primary payloads. This was where Virgin Orbit hoped its LauncherOne could find a place in the market.

5 A private space race

Private space companies are rushing to find new and cheaper ways to put satellites into orbit and develop the space market..

In recent years, there has been a space race in the private sector, with multiple companies rushing to be the first to offer tourist space flights and launch satellites. CNBC states that Virgin Orbit's method of launching its rockets, called "air launch," was chosen because it is more flexible than traditional launch pads used by its competitors like SpaceX, Rock Lab, and Astra.

The space race is heating up again, but instead of being between the USSR and the USA, it is mostly between private companies. With its LauncherOne, Virgin Orbit tried and failed to be a major player in cheaply putting small satellites into orbit. It seems it will be left to others to carry on where Virgin Orbit left off.