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 plans to move SpaceShipTwo operations to Spaceport America in New Mexico after completing test flights in Mojave.
The Under Armour-designed apparel and spacesuit designs for Virgin Galactic will be unveiled later 2019.
Aabar Investments, an Abu Dhabi-based fund now part of Mubadala Investment Company, invested $280,000,000 in Virgin Galactic in 2009 for a roughly one-third stake in the company.
Virgin Galactic expects to begin commercial flights later this year from Spaceport America in New Mexico.
Virgin Galactic has been selling tickets for flights on its SpaceShipTwo suborbital vehicle for more than a decade.
Richard Branson is the founder of Virgin Galactic.
Tickets for Virgin Galactic flights were priced at $250,000 each, but Branson indicated the price would likely increase temporarily.
Virgin Galactic put ticket sales on hold after a 2014 test flight accident that destroyed the first SpaceShipTwo and killed a pilot.
Virgin Galactic has about 700 customers who have paid at least a deposit on tickets that cost up to $250,000.
Three payloads that flew on Virgin Galactic’s 2018-12-13 SpaceShipTwo flight—a vibration isolation platform from Controlled Dynamics Inc., a dust-particle behavior experiment from the University of Central Florida, and a biological fluorescent imaging instrument from the University of Florida—are also flying on Blue Origin’s NS-10 mission.
Virgin Orbit is the company spun off from Virgin Galactic to develop and operate the LauncherOne air-launch system.
Venture Class Launch Services contracts in 2015 were also awarded to Firefly Space Systems and Virgin Galactic.
Virgin Galactic’s second SpaceShipTwo, VSS Unity, reached a peak altitude of 82.7 km on its 2018-12-13 test flight over the Mojave Air and Space Port.
Richard Branson has personally invested about $1,000,000,000 into the Virgin Galactic project.
Total investment in Virgin Galactic, The Spaceship Company, and Virgin Orbit is about $1.3 to $1,500,000,000.
Virgin Galactic completed its first revenue-generating flight with the 2018-12-13 mission of VSS Unity.
Virgin Galactic previously offered tickets at a price of $250,000.
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo vehicle VSS Unity performed its highest test flight to date on 2018-12-13, reaching a peak altitude of 83 km.
Virgin Galactic originally announced plans in September 2004 to develop a vehicle based on SpaceShipOne.
Plans to develop SpaceShipTwo date back to Richard Branson’s formation of Virgin Galactic in September 2004 and plans to license SpaceShipOne technology from Scaled Composites and Paul Allen.