After a two-year break: Virgin Galactic will soon be flying tourists into space again

Space tourism company Virgin Galactic has announced a first return mission in May and commercial spaceflights from late June after a two-year hiatus. The Unity 25 mission with four Virgin Galactic employees will take place “at the end of May”, British entrepreneur Richard Branson’s company announced Monday.

During the two-year flight hiatus, the company claims to have modified and upgraded the aircraft carrier and spacecraft. Unity 25 will be the final test run for the systems before Virgin Galactic offers space travel for the well-to-do in June. Branson himself boarded his company’s last spaceflight nearly two years ago.

The spacecraft will glide back to Earth from an altitude of 80 kilometers

The Unity 25 mission is Virgin Galactic’s fifth flight to reach space at an altitude of more than 50 miles, as defined by the United States Air Force. The crew consists of two women and two men.

The planned flight offers only a few minutes of weightlessness: a huge aircraft carrier takes off from a conventional runway and drops the spacecraft, which looks like a large private jet, at a great height.

From this point, the spacecraft, using its own engine, climbs more than 50 miles (80 kilometers) above Earth before descending again in a gliding flight and landing on the same runway. Flights are operated from Spaceport America’s base in the New Mexico desert.

Fatal accident threw business back

Since 2005, the company has presold approximately 800 space travel tickets. Prices for a flight ranged from $200,000 to $450,000. But Virgin Galactic’s space program has been delayed for years despite the many requests, especially after a 2014 accident that killed a pilot. The first commercial flight, named Galactic 01, is scheduled to take off this year with passengers from the Italian Air Force.

Virgin Galactic competes with Blue Origin, the company owned by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, which has already sent 32 people into space on short suborbital flights. Since an accident in September 2022, his rocket has also been grounded. Blue Origin announced in March that it would resume space travel “soon”. (afp/t online)