Virgin Galactic, founded by Richard Branson, is a British-American spaceflight company focused on providing suborbital spaceflights to space tourists and researchers. As the world's first commercial spaceline, it develops and operates its own reusable spaceflight systems, including the SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo. While the company is shifting its focus to Delta class vehicles for commercial service in 2026, its current partners include Redwire for manufacturing research payload lockers and it operates from Spaceport America in New Mexico.
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Virgin Galactic raised $241,000,000 in a sale of stock in the second quarter of 2023.
Virgin Galactic expects to add a fourth paying customer to Unity flights in 2024, increasing per-flight revenue to about $800,000.
Virgin Galactic had revenue of $2,000,000 in the second quarter of 2023.
Virgin Galactic suffered a serious accident during testing that resulted in the death of a pilot.
Walter Villadei, an Italian Air Force pilot, flew on Virgin Galactic’s first commercial suborbital flight on 2023-06-29 and trained with Axiom Space while serving as a backup on the Ax-2 mission to the International Space Station in May.
Virgin Galactic plans to begin regular commercial flights with the first flight carrying private astronauts scheduled for early August.
Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceplane VSS Unity took off on June 29 attached to its VMS Eve mothership aircraft.
Virgin Galactic performed the June 29 flight for the Italian Air Force under a contract signed in October 2019.
OceanGate charged $250,000 for tickets to its expeditions, while Virgin Galactic charges $450,000 for its flights.
Virgin Galactic is also planning additional research flights on a fixed schedule to assist scientists in planning their research.
Virgin Galactic resumed test flights of VSS Unity in spring 2024, including a 2024-05-25 flight called Unity 25 that was the vehicle’s first suborbital spaceflight since Unity 22.
Virgin Galactic shares closed down nearly 10.8% on 2024-06-29, with most losses occurring in trading after the Galactic 01 flight.
Virgin Galactic and the Italian Air Force signed a contract in October 2019 to fly three Italian payload specialists on a dedicated research flight.
Virgin Galactic delayed the Italian research flight and began maintenance early in October 2021 for both VMS Eve and VSS Unity.
Richard Branson announced plans for Virgin Galactic in September 2004, just before SpaceShipOne won the $10,000,000 Ansari X Prize.
Virgin Galactic completed final preparations for the Galactic 01 mission on 2023-06-28.
Virgin Galactic plans a takeoff of its VMS Eve mothership with the VSS Unity spaceplane attached at about 10:30 a.m. Eastern on 2023-06-29.
Sirisha Bandla is vice president of government affairs and research operations at Virgin Galactic and worked on research payloads on the July 2021 flight.
Virgin Galactic scheduled the Galactic 01 commercial spaceflight for a target date of 2023-06-29.
The Virtute 1 mission is the first Italian and European suborbital flight conceived and designed by the National Research Council of Italy and Virgin Galactic to test suborbital spaceflight versatility for scientific and technological research.