Twenty-eight alumni of Indiana-based Purdue have flown to space or been selected for spaceflight. That impressive roster includes Apollo astronauts Neil Armstrong, Gene Cernan, Roger Chaffee and Gus Grissom, as well as Adam Fuhrmann and Yuri Kubo, members of NASA's just-announced 2025 astronaut class.

And the list just got longer, for Purdue announced today (Sept. 23) that it's sending a team of researchers, students and alumni to suborbital space with Virgin Galactic in 2027, on a mission called Purdue 1.

"This mission with Purdue University is a powerful demonstration of what becomes possible when research institutions and educators gain direct access to the microgravity environment," Virgin Galactic President of Spaceline Mike Moses, a former NASA space shuttle launch integration manager who also went to Purdue, said in a statement.

"By enabling researchers to accompany and interact with their experiments in real time, we are not just advancing science — we are empowering the next generation of innovators and expanding the frontiers of educational opportunity," added Moses, whose wife Beth Moses is Virgin Galactic's chief astronaut instructor, a veteran of multiple suborbital spaceflights and a former Boilermaker herself.

Purdue 1 will carry five passengers to and from suborbital space, along with two pilots. Those passengers are Steven Collicott, a Purdue professor of aerospace engineering; Purdue graduate student Abigail Mizzi; alumnus Jason Williamson and two other alumni who will be named at a later date.

Virgin Galactic's space plane can carry six crewmembers, but one seat will be removed from the cabin on this flight to accommodate the mission's research payloads, according to the university.

Those experiments will be carried out by Collicott and Mizzi. Collicott's work will look at how liquids spread over a surface, while Mizzi will investigate how liquids oscillate in zero gravity.

"If you spill water on your kitchen counter, you’ll see it spreads more in some ways than others," Collicott said, in a description of his experiment. "Is this drinking water in a space station or a liquid packed with nutrients for a plant growth system? We need to get this important data to learn more about these flows to aid in spaceflight hardware design for future long-duration missions and perhaps so that future payloads can be automated, which would make missions even less expensive."

Virgin Galactic's space plane lifts off under the wings of a carrier aircraft, which drops it at an altitude of about 50,000 feet (15,000 meters). The spacecraft ignites its onboard rocket motor, powering its own way to suborbital space, then glides back down for a runway landing here on Earth.

The company reached space for the first time in December 2018 and conducted its first fully crewed flight in July 2021. (Virgin Group founder Richard Branson was one of the passengers on that debut jaunt).

Virgin Galactic has flown seven commercial flights to date, the most recent one occurring in June 2024. The company has paused its launches to get a new, more advanced version of its space plane, known as the Delta class, up and running.

These new vehicles are expected to start flying in 2026, so Purdue 1 will be a Delta flight.

Virgin Galactic's most recent ticket price was $600,000. That was for a seat on the old VSS Unity space plane, however; prices for the Delta spacecraft have not yet been set, but they're expected to be a bit higher.

Collicott's seat will be paid for by NASA; the professor won a research proposal competition through the agency's Flight Opportunities program. Donations accepted by Purdue will fund Mizzi's trip, while the three alumni on the flight will pay for their own seats, according to the university.

Virgin Galactic is also collaborating on a feasibility study with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to look at using its mothership aircraft to launch other spacecraft at high altitude as a carrier platform.

"Progress on our SpaceShips continues across all systems and structures," reports Michael Colglazier, CEO of Virgin Galactic. He underscores a strong financial balance sheet, "to execute our business model as we bring our SpaceShips into commercial service." Colglazier says commercial service remains planned for 2026, with both research and private astronaut flights expected in the fall next year.

Conference call

The construction of Virgin Galactic's new Delta Class space plane was reviewed during the company's second quarter 2025 business conference call on Aug. 6.

The company highlighted ongoing work on Delta Class systems and structures, such as wing assembly to be completed during the fourth quarter of this year, as well as the craft's novel "feather" assembly. The feathering system is utilized when the suborbital vehicle heads back to Earth, making it more stable during the reentry process. Construction of the Delta Class SpaceShip fuselage is expected to be completed late this year or early 2026.

Also noted in the business update was progress in a feasibility study to potentially develop a second spaceport in Italy.

Flight frequency

Final assembly of the vehicles will take place at Virgin Galactic's Delta facility near Phoenix, Arizona. The Delta Class spaceships are being built to be capable of flying eight space missions per month, with twelve times the monthly payload or customer capacity of their original spaceship, VSS Unity.

The firm explains that their next-generation vehicles will bring humans to space at an unprecedented frequency with an industry-leading cost structure.

Virgin Galactic's Mike Moses, president of Spaceline, oversees the commercial spaceflight program. A newly issued "Galactic 10" video spotlighted development milestones in moving the Delta Class SpaceShip program forward.

The suborbital space tourism company last went to the final frontier in June 2024, on the final flight of its VSS Unity space plane. Virgin retired Unity to focus on developing its new, more efficient "Delta class" vehicles — and the first of those advanced, six-passenger ships remains on track to debut next year, according to the company.

"An enormous amount of work is taking place across our company, as well as at our key suppliers," Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said during an earnings call with investors on May 15. "We continue to expect our first [Delta] research spaceflight will take place in summer of 2026, with private astronaut flights following in fall of 2026."

That call, which reported Virgin Galactic's financial results for the first quarter of 2025, provided a number of other updates as well.

For example, Colglazier said the company — which currently has about 675 customers on its manifest — plans to start accepting flight reservations again in the first quarter of 2026. New customers will be brought onboard via a new "highly bespoke education sales process" that will feature distinct "waves."

"This approach has several intended benefits for customers," Colglazier said. "Tailoring the number of new arrivals into our future astronaut community during each wave allows us to provide a white-glove onboarding experience that will form the foundation of each customer's journey to space. From a yield-management perspective, this allows us to adjust our pricing wave by wave."

Ticket prices have not yet been set, though it's expected to be higher than the $600,000 that the most recent customers paid, he added.

Virgin Galactic is currently building two Delta-class ships but plans to expand the fleet over time. The company will be quite busy once the first one comes online. Each of the new space planes is designed to fly twice per week, Colglazier said — a big leap in cadence over VSS Unity, which flew seven commercial passenger missions from June 2023 until its retirement a year later.

Virgin Galactic employs an air-launch strategy. Like VSS Unity, each Delta ship will lift off from a runway beneath the wings of a large carrier aircraft, which will drop the space plane at altitude. The spaceship will then ignite its onboard rocket motor, powering its own way to suborbital space, and come back down to Earth for a landing on the same runway from which it took off.

In last quarter's earnings call, Virgin Galactic mentioned the possibility of making the carrier aircraft a multipurpose vehicle — using it to haul something other than a space plane into the sky. Over the past few months, the company has continued investigating this potential vehicle variant, which it calls HALE ("High Altitude Long Endurance")-Heavy.

"Since last quarter, we've connected with leaders within the Department of Defense, national laboratories and aerospace and defense companies to ascertain the potential product market fit of our carrier aircraft capabilities with government customer needs," Colglazier said.

"We've been encouraged by initial feedback, which has identified both existing and emerging missions that could potentially benefit from access to HALE-Heavy support aircraft," he added. "Examples of these missions could include airborne research and development testing; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support; command and control node capabilities; and multiple opportunities within the emerging Golden Dome [missile defense] initiative."

To date, all of Virgin Galactic's suborbital missions have lifted off from Spaceport America in New Mexico. But the company is looking to fly from a second site as well, likely in either Europe or the Middle East.

Virgin Galactic is making progress on this goal as well, Colglazier said during the May 15 call.

"We are midway through our feasibility assessment with the Italian government for a spaceport in southern Italy," he said.

Already home to an array of commercial space industry tenants, such as Virgin Galactic, SpinLaunch, Up Aerospace, and Prismatic, Spaceport America is a "rocket-friendly environment of 6,000 square miles of restricted airspace, low population density, a 12,000-foot by 200-foot runway, vertical launch complexes, and about 340 days of sunshine and low humidity," the organization boasts on its website.

Scott McLaughlin is an engineer, drawing upon a past of design and business marketing to help determine how best to grow Spaceport America, an inland spot in southern New Mexico desert that offers 18,000 acres adjacent to the U.S. Army White Sands Missile Range. Space.com caught up with McLaughlin in an exclusive interview during the Space Foundation's 40th Space Symposium, to gain a perspective on the Spaceport America of now and a look at what's glimmering on the horizon and assuring the sprawling complex is a vibrant and vital part of America's aerospace infrastructure.

Space.com: How's your outlook for Spaceport America, eyeing it as a good place for orbital launch and reentry?

McLaughlin: We're trying to be a site as ready as we can and one that anticipates the market, trying to get ahead of that market. We have distinct areas of the spaceport, but not so distinct that we can't do different things at different times.

In our vertical launch area [VLA], we also are looking at testing of things that could explode or crash. We're focused on getting water to that location, and also have a facility that protects operations there — like payload processing — from the sun, rain and weather. We are trying to develop the VLA to be a real orbital vertical launch site.

Space.com: How about supporting horizontal launch?

McLaughlin: That's where we are getting a lot of interest. We're expanding access roads and about to build a hangar that acts as a security center, a STEM [education] center, and leasable office space. It would also offer a small conference area; and handle small vehicle and payload processing. That's a big change for us.

Space.com: You noted market changes. What changes do you see that make Spaceport America even more viable today?

McLaughlin: I think opening ourselves up to doing different kinds of work. We're more like a civilian test range now. We've got high-altitude UAVs [Unmanned Aerial Vehicles]. We're willing to do engine production.

We believe we're about to sign a data center, one that's able to provide services to our customers who want low-latency, artificial intelligence, or high-powered computing. You'll be able to rent some virtual machines and do your own thing and have it be instantaneous at the spaceport.

So I think being more broadminded about what we can do at the spaceport is helping generate customers and revenue.

Space.com: Over the years, people have been attracted to Spaceport America due to the suborbital flights of Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic. How's that relationship?

McLaughlin: Our goal is to see Virgin Galactic fly in a year or so, hopefully flying twice a week, and that will have a big impact on the spaceport.

Space.com: That impact also includes friends and families, no?

McLaughlin: It does. It looks like each passenger brings close to 20 others. So you multiply 20 times 6 passengers onboard the spaceship, times two flights a week, times 54 weeks. That's a lot of people in the area to explore other parts of New Mexico!

Space.com: Projecting into the near-future, what other endeavors are in the offing?

McLaughlin: Again, we're trying to be open-minded as we're partnered with White Sands Missile Range to use that airspace.

We're even looking at things like an electromagnetic pulse facility. It's a customer that I can't identify yet.

And our long-term goal is orbital launch. But we need a vehicle that is designed for orbital launch, either a single-stage-to-orbit with some nice abort modes, or a vehicle that might have wings which would make a nice abort mode. So we're talking to vehicle developers that are thinking the same thing.

Unfortunately for us, they will have to test and prove that technology, probably over water. But once that technology is proven then we'd be a great site for both takeoff and reentry.

Space.com: How is the prospect of reentry into Spaceport America?

McLaughlin: We are working on a reentry license too. We recently discussed this with specialists and we think we have a site relatively close to the spaceport that's flat and free of mesquite bushes and such, so we can do capsule return and other types of return. And of course we have the runway. So I'd think we'd be the only spaceport that does vertical and horizontal launch and reentry.

Space.com: Being an inland spaceport, given ocean-neighboring launch sites, how do you pitch the advantages?

McLaughlin: We're never going to have the throughput that the Cape in Florida has. But we'll be a good alternative especially if you're going to do a small to medium-sized launch, and you need to do it quickly, and perhaps do it more securely than you would if you were to fly over water. That's why the Department of Defense is showing interest in the inland spaceport.

Space.com: In your marketing campaign for Spaceport America, what are your top-tier take-away messages for potential customers?

McLaughlin: We're very proud of Virgin Galactic and proud they have continued their development in spite of the difficulty of taking humans to space. But at the same time, so many people have connected Spaceport America only with Virgin Galactic.

The story we have to tell is that we have a lot more space and we have a lot more customers. We have much bigger aspirations beyond Virgin Galactic, and in fact, we hope that Virgin Galactic might be part of that someday, like point-to-point travel or going into orbit.

At Spaceport America we have a much larger vision. We're trying to demonstrate that to both our stakeholders and our customers. We do a lot of cool stuff, and that makes a big difference.

Whitesides, who also has "NASA chief of staff" on his resume, won his U.S. House of Representatives race to represent California's 27th district, which covers a big chunk of land north of Los Angeles.

"It's the honor of a lifetime to be elected to serve our district in Congress and deliver for Santa Clarita, the Antelope Valley and the San Fernando Valley," Whitesides wrote in a statement on X Monday night (Nov. 11). "In Congress, you can count on me to fight to create more good local jobs, lower everyday costs, build safe communities, protect Social Security and Medicare and protect reproductive freedom," he added.

Whitesides, a Democrat, beat Republican incumbent Mike Garcia in a close race, capturing about 51% of the vote. Garcia conceded on Monday (Nov. 11), according to LAist.com.

Related: 'What's Starlink?' Trump talks Elon Musk, Starship and SpaceX in election night victory speech (video)

Whitesides will take a wealth of aerospace experience and interest to Washington, D.C. From 2004 to 2008, for example, he was executive director of the National Space Society, a nonprofit that advocates for space science and exploration. During that stretch, he also served as a senior adviser to Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson's suborbital space tourism company. 

Whitesides worked on President-elect Barack Obama's transition team in 2008 and became NASA's chief of staff the next year. He held that post until May 2010, when he left with the Distinguished Service Medal, the agency's highest honor. 

He returned to Virgin Galactic, becoming the company's first-ever CEO. Whitesides departed the company in 2021 to gear up for a political run (and do other things, such as co-found Megafire Action, an organization devoted to combating the United States' worsening wildfire problem).

Last week's election brought other aerospace players into the political action as well — chief among them SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk, who campaigned hard for President-elect Donald Trump.

Trump announced yesterday (Nov. 12) that Musk will co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency, a new organization that aims to "dismantle government bureaucracy" and "slash excess regulations."

In September 2024, two non-professional astronauts completed the first privately funded spacewalk, using the Crew Dragon spacecraft built by Elon Musk’s company SpaceX. Meanwhile, Houston-based private company Axiom Space is conducting regular flights to the International Space Station (ISS), carrying a mixture of government-funded astronauts and paying customers.

In the last few years, nearly 100 people have become private astronauts through the space tourism companies Blue Origin, operated by Jeff Bezos and Virgin Galactic, by Sir Richard Branson. While the price of a seat on these vehicles remains out of reach for most of us, prices are expected to drop as more players enter the market.

Despite the rapid growth in the number of space travellers, underrepresented population groups are still left behind, particularly those with disabilities. So how can space agencies and “space tourism” companies make spaceflight more inclusive for disabled astronauts?

Related: Para-astronaut John McFall hopes to see an ISS astronaut with a disability fly by 2030 (exclusive, video)

The European Space Agency (Esa) recently recruited John McFall, who lost his right leg aged 19, as the world’s first disabled astronaut. McFall, who is a surgeon and former paralympic sprinter, will participate in a feasibility study to improve understanding of, and overcome, the barriers that spaceflight presents for astronauts with physical disabilities.

Esa’s most recent selection of astronauts was entirely of white European background, showing how far things still have to go. But its move to recruit McFall marked a significant milestone towards a more inclusive approach to spaceflight.

Designing effective systems for the inclusion of disabled people is a longstanding challenge on Earth – and space presents a whole new paradigm. The very specific demands of spaceflight mean we can’t assume that traditional adjustments and assistive technology will work beyond Earth’s atmosphere. So, making spaceflight more inclusive requires looking at each step of going into space.

Astronaut training is a complex process, designed to simulate the space environment and enable candidates to perform well under a variety of conditions they may encounter in orbit. But in many cases, the training facilities are not well designed for individuals with physical or sensory impairments.

For example, in order to get on the plane that flies in an arc to simulate microgravity (colloquially referred to as the “vomit comet”), astronauts must climb a set of stairs, which presents a hurdle to anyone with a mobility impairment. Ironically, impairments that restrict the use of stairs on Earth might be much less of a restriction once in space.

Spacecraft and space suit design will be another key focus. The space suits onboard the ISS were originally designed with male astronauts in mind, meaning that female astronauts have to “make do” with what is there. This has caused challenges as the number of female astronauts has risen.

In 2019, NASA had to postpone the first all-female spacewalk because the torso of a space suit was too large for one of the spacewalkers. The Moon suit developed by Axiom Space in collaboration with Italian fashion house Prada is a step towards inclusivity, with anthropomorphic sizing to accommodate a wide range of crew members. Yet, future disabled astronauts might still encounter challenges if they have differences in their limbs or impairments to their dexterity.

Interestingly, the new SpaceX Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA) suits have something called “embedded modularity” – each section of the suit is customised to the intended astronaut, and all sections fit together. While intended to help with joint positioning, these suits present a unique opportunity to support disabled astronauts with limb differences.

Inclusive suits could include a single fixed leg portion for individuals with paralysis, and removable parts for those with limb differences. Haptic gloves could provide tactile feedback through the space suit for astronauts with limb differences.

For individuals with visual impairments, incorporating augmented reality (AR) heads-up displays (transparent displays that show the user data overlaid over their environment) and AI-powered image-to-voice software that can translate purely visual information into audio explanations could make a huge difference.

Technological support similar to the app “Be My Eyes”, pairing sighted assistants with visually impaired people to help explain their environment, could also find uses in spacesuits.

Thriving in space

An often overlooked part of astronaut life is maintaining physical fitness through intensive exercise regimes. Exercise is required because both muscle and bone waste away quickly in microgravity – but the fitness equipment aboard the ISS, such as the treadmill and bike, is difficult to adapt for disabled people. Both require use of both feet to operate.

Re-engineering the systems for exercise, eating, working, going to the toilet and other essential activities is critical for enabling disabled astronauts to thrive in space.

Assistive technologies that could be used inside a spacecraft, as opposed to within a spacesuit, are continually evolving and taking many forms. As such, there are always opportunities to improve the environment on a space mission to make it more inclusive for disabled astronauts.

Examples could include virtual reality (VR) for use in ground training, smart prosthetics that enable the completion of complex tasks, and computer vision with AI guiding visually impaired astronauts.

Policies implemented by space agencies have traditionally been exclusionary, focusing on able-bodied individuals and ignoring the potential of those who are different. And while some space agencies are establishing advisory committees and promoting diversity, this work is often limited to narrow purposes within these agencies.

Despite the UK and many other countries having specific laws to reduce discrimination in the workplace, the international nature of the space sector can cause difficulty. For this reason, policies mandating inclusion and equity across the space sector are crucial. Most importantly, space agencies should ensure adequate funding and resources to support any inclusion initiatives and work with disability advocacy groups.

Often, the root causes of inclusion barriers are a lack of understanding or awareness of disabilities. In many cases, consulting and involving disabled people in decision-making processes reduces these barriers. It is essential the space sector recruits individuals from diverse backgrounds to begin with.

Although the concept of “diversity quotas” has historically been divisive, the first place to start is to understand the diversity both of current and potential space travelers. Publicizing diversity statistics can help hold agencies accountable, and encourage initiatives aimed at greater inclusion.

There remains a lot to do, but with a collaborative approach, the new commercial space race could act as a shining example to the rest of the world in its approach to disability.

The Virgin Galactic founder made record-breaking hot-air balloon flights across the Atlantic and the Pacific in 1987 and 1991, respectively — and he'll soon take to the winds again, serving as co-pilot on the first crewed flight by Space Perspective, a Florida-based stratospheric ballooning company. That landmark mission is expected sometime in 2025.

"Some of the most magnificent experiences of my life have happened on ballooning expeditions, and I'm excited to support Space Perspective in its journey," Branson said in an emailed statement today (Oct. 17). "I look forward to dusting off my old ballooning license ahead of some magnificent test flights."

Branson has also invested in Space Perspective, which has raised $100 million to date, according to the statement.

"I'm passionate about adventure and helping fellow entrepreneurs reach their business dreams," he said

Related: Space Perspective completes 1st uncrewed balloon flight to the edge of Earth's atmosphere (video)

Space Perspective plans to send paying customers to the stratosphere using a giant, hydrogen-filled balloon and an eight-passenger crew capsule called Spaceship Neptune. 

It will be a much different experience than the rocket-powered suborbital rides offered by Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' aerospace company. For example, each Space Perspective flight will be long and leisurely, traveling at the average speed of the wind and lasting roughly six hours. 

Spaceship Neptune is designed to keep people happy for such long jaunts. It's large enough to walk around in, for example, and features big windows, a bar and a fully appointed bathroom.

Spaceship Neptune will reach a maximum altitude of about 20 miles (32 kilometers) — far below the boundary of space, which is either 50 miles (80 km) or 62 miles (100 km), depending upon whom you ask. But that's still high enough to get breathtaking views of Earth against the blackness of space, according to the company.

Branson will get to compare the Spaceship Neptune experience with a suborbital trip; he went to the final frontier aboard Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity space plane in July 2021.

Space Perspective conducted its first full-up test flight last month, using an uncrewed test capsule called Excelsior. Everything went well on that mission, which traveled on the same trajectory that tourist flights will take.

Branson will be joined on the upcoming crewed flight by Space Perspective co-founders Taber MacCollum and Jane Poynter, who will also serve as co-pilots.

"Richard's pioneering efforts in the ballooning industry were a key inspiration for us when we founded Space Perspective," Poynter said in the same statement. "We are now on a mission to give Explorers breathtaking views of the Earth against a black sky, and do so gently in a way that only balloons enable."

More than 1,800 people have reserved a seat aboard Spaceship Neptune, for $125,000 a pop, according to the company. For comparison, Virgin Galactic currently charges $450,000 for a ride to suborbital space. Blue Origin has not released its ticket prices.

Three people launched toward the International Space Station (ISS) today (Sept. 11) aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule, pushing the total number of people in Earth orbit to a new high-water mark.

"With the trio now in orbit, there is a record of 19 people currently in orbit," NASA commentator Anna Schneider said during the agency's webcast of the Soyuz liftoff. The old record was 17, set last year.

The Soyuz that launched today is carrying NASA's Don Pettit and cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner. The trio is expected to arrive at the ISS around 3:30 p.m. EDT (1930 GMT), just three hours after launch.

They'll join nine people aboard the orbiting lab: NASA astronauts Michael Barratt, Tracy Caldwell-Dyson, Matthew Dominick, Jeanette Epps, Barry Wilmore and Suni Williams, and cosmonauts Nikolai Chub, Alexander Grebenkin and Oleg Kononenko.

Wilmore and Williams were supposed to be home already; they launched this past June on Crew Flight Test (CFT), the first-ever crewed mission of Boeing's Starliner capsule. CFT was supposed to last just 10 days or so, but Starliner suffered thruster problems in orbit, and NASA kept the capsule docked to the ISS for three months while studying the issue. Ultimately, the agency decided to return Starliner to Earth uncrewed — which happened over the weekend — and bring Williams and Wilmore home on a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule next February.

Related: The most extreme human spaceflight records

There are also three people living aboard China's Tiangong space station at the moment — Li Cong, Li Guangsu and Ye Guangfu of the nation's Shenzhou 18 mission — and four astronauts inhabiting a free-flying Crew Dragon.

That quartet — Jared Isaacman, Scott Poteet, Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon —launched Tuesday (Sept. 10) on the five-day Polaris Dawn mission. Their Crew Dragon, named Resilience, has already gotten farther from Earth than any crewed vehicle since the Apollo era, and Polaris Dawn aims to make more history soon: Isaacman and Gillis plan to conduct the first-ever private spacewalk at around 2:20 a.m. EDT (0620 GMT) on Thursday (Sept. 12).

The record for most people in space overall is 20, set in May 2023 and then tied on Jan. 26 of this year. On both occasions, 14 orbiting spaceflyers were joined briefly in the final frontier by six space tourists who reached the suborbital realm aboard Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity space plane.

VSS Unity gets more than 50 miles (80 kilometers) above Earth, which NASA and the U.S. military regard as the beginning of outer space. But the vehicle doesn't reach the 62-mile-high (100 km) Kármán line, which some other people and organizations recognize as space's boundary.

For Kármán line devotees, the "most people in space" record is 19, set during the NS-19 flight of Blue Origin's suborbital New Shepard vehicle on Dec. 11, 2021 — and tied today with the Soyuz launch.

Here's a look at the pros and cons of space tourism.

Related: How SpaceShipOne's historic launch 20 years ago paved the way for a new space tourism era

The pros of space tourism

A handful of private individuals, colloquially known as space tourists,  managed to purchase tickets to the ISS or Russia's Mir station. However, with the end of the space shuttle program in 2011, NASA canceled any further opportunities. That picture changed with the emergence of private spaceflight companies headed by various billionaires, including Elon Musk's SpaceX, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic.

Of the three, only Virgin Galactic has a stated long-term goal of promoting space tourism, offering quick suborbital flights just above the Kármán line — the arbitrary but internationally recognized edge of space. Paying customers can get a similar experience with Blue Origin, but that company hopes to pivot to orbital industries. With SpaceX, you can get a multiday stay in orbit, but you'll have to bid against numerous government contracts for the opportunity.

Promoters of space tourism have suggested various benefits of the industry. For example, many space tourists are actively running and participating in experiments, such as examining the effects of microgravity on human health, plant growth and material properties. This is real science that needs to be done to propel humanity to the stars.

There's also financial propulsion, with hundreds of millions of dollars of investment going into the newfound industry. Companies are developing new equipment, techniques, technologies and more so they can offer tickets to space. And the more we invest in space in general, the better off our shared ventures will be.

The frequent launches of space tourists, including celebrities such as William Shatner, have caught the media by storm. This, in turn, fuels more public interest, which can lead to more discussion, more awareness and more funding.

The cons of space tourism

On the other hand, critics of space tourism point out that the industry is catering solely to exceptionally wealthy individuals. Ironically, this can lead to a sense of public disillusionment with space: Instead of opening it up to everyone, it might cause people to roll their eyes at the inaccessibility. Basically, it's just rich people doing rich-people things.

Because of the enormous cost of a ticket — anywhere from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of dollars — it's hard for most people to see the value in space tourism as an industry. They simply don't get to participate in it. 

And while some space tourists have conducted experiments during their expeditions, those experiments haven't exactly been revolutionary or consisted of anything that couldn't be done by astronauts on the ISS. So space tourism isn't really advancing human spaceflight in any significant way.

Lastly, space tourism is a niche business. While some companies have developed technologies that are specific to this industry, those technologies will not necessarily transfer to other space-related activities, like industrial or scientific applications. We could be spending all this time, money and resources on a business venture that never grows significantly and never leads to anything else.

The bottom line

The bottom line is that space is hard — it's difficult to get to space, and it's difficult for humans to remain in space for any length of time. Most space tourism companies have folded well before their first attempted launch, and it's not clear that this business niche will grow all that much. Only roughly 60 people have been to space as tourists, and the vast majority of them have gone only on quick suborbital joyrides with a few minutes of weightlessness. 

There are only a few launches, at most, every year dedicated to space tourism, and a peek at planned launch schedules reveals that this number will not change much over the coming years.

Most people will never get the opportunity to become a space tourist; it will likely remain a niche industry serving a select set of very wealthy individuals. It's not a game changer in any direction. It will continue to be a component of the overall human interest in space but not a major driver of innovation or expansion.

But hey, if you're ever given the chance, go for it!

Virgin Galactic has revealed the design for its Delta class spaceship.

The suborbital space tourism firm posted a video on Wednesday (Aug. 7) showcasing an animation of the Delta design, which is sleek and modular, with components that aim to provide new efficiencies for human spaceflight.

Virgin Galactic says its new Delta ships are being built to operate with an average turnaround time of just three days, which, the firm says, would mark an enormous breakthrough and would structurally change the cost of human spaceflight. Its previous spaceship, VSS Unity, was capable of flying once a month.

The new spacecraft, powered by a hybrid rocket system, will also upgrade from four passengers to six over the old spaceship.

Delta is set to fly for the first time no earlier than 2026. But the company says it is progressing well on design work.

"Progress on our Delta Class spaceship program was substantial in Q2, with the pace of design completion accelerating and tool fabrication underway," Michael Colglazier, CEO of Virgin Galactic, said in an Aug. 7 statement alongside the company's financial results for the second quarter. 

"In the next month, our teams will pivot primary focus from design completion to the build and test phases of our production spaceships, which remain on track to enter commercial service in 2026."

Related: Who is Virgin Galactic and what do they do?

The firm says it plans to generate revenue of $450 million per year in the years following the first two Delta spaceships entering service. The video also outlines plans for up to five ships at spaceports around the world in the future.

The final flight of the previous space plane, VSS Unity, took place in June. Virgin Galactic then switched to focusing on its Delta plans.

Virgin Galactic hit a major milestone in its new generation spaceship plans last month. The company completed a new Delta space plane manufacturing facility in Mesa, Arizona in July.

Virgin Galactic's new "Delta" class space planes are set to take flight no earlier than 2026. The final flight of their previous space plane, VSS Unity, took place on June 8 and saw a Turkish astronaut and three space tourists reach suborbital space and experience a few minutes of weightlessness. Virgin Galactic has already named an international group of crew members for one of the first Delta class flights, which will include past Virgin Galactic American private astronaut Kellie Gerardi, who flew aboard Galactic 05 in November 2023, along with Canadian Shawna Pandya and Ireland's Norah Patten to space no earlier than 2026.

To help build its fleet of Delta class vehicles, The aerospace company announced in a statement that its new multi-use facility has been completed in Mesa, Arizona, and preparations are now underway to make it the main location for building and assembling its next generation Delta space planes. 

Virgin Galactic expects to install final manufacturing hardware at the end of the year. After that, upon the arrival of major subassemblies such as the feathering system, fuselage, and wings, Virgin Galactic's team anticipates the building to begin on its initial pair of Delta ships in 2025. 

Once production and ground testing are complete, the finished spaceships will head to Spaceport America in New Mexico to undergo a flight test before commercial operations are anticipated to start in 2026.

"The completion of our new manufacturing facility is an important milestone in the development of our fleet of next-generation spaceships, the key to our scale and profitability," Michael Colglazier, Virgin Galactic CEO, said in the statement. "Tooling will begin arriving in a matter of months to support spaceship final assembly, which we expect to commence in Q1 2025."

There are two hangars that include several bays at the multiuse facility, which will allow for utmost flexibility when it comes to the manufacturing and testing of space vehicles. Virgin Galactic uses a digital twin technology, which will allow a "seamless" connection with real-time collaboration between workers at the facility and the company's suppliers.

Each of the Delta spaceships have room for up to six passengers and can carry out missions up to eight times per month. 

Let loose from its White Knight mothership, the rocket engine propelling the experimental suborbital SpaceShipOne vehicle roared to life, skillfully controlled by test pilot Mike Melvill. 

That pioneering first spaceflight lasted 24 minutes, gliding back to Mojave and sliding straight and true into the history books.

Now, two decades later, Burt Rutan, chief designer of the craft at the company Scaled Composites, reflects on that epic day in an exclusive interview with Space.com.

Start spreading the news

Following the flight, Rutan saw a sign being held in the crowd. It read: "SpaceShipOne, Government Zero."

"I thought, 'That's cool. Let me see if I could display it with the spaceship,'" Rutan said. "It wasn't ours. I found out later it was put together by libertarians."

Those words speak volumes. They also underscore a truism that spread its wings that memorable day.

"We were covert for two years of a three-and-a-half-year program. Nobody knew what we were up to," Rutan said. "We not only didn't have government help or government equipment; the government had no idea that we were doing a manned space program," he added.

SpaceShipOne — and the intentions of Rutan and his tiny team of like-minded visionaries — were publicly revealed in April 2003, with the rollout of the vehicle. "It was essentially ready to fly," Rutan said, "and we let the world know that we are actually going to try and send our test pilots to space."

Related: Facts about SpaceShipOne, the 1st private spacecraft

Gulp factor

On that big reveal day, the White Knight carrier plane performed an in-flight aerobatic display, adding to the ambience and sky-high excitement of what was to come, taking a private vehicle where none had gone before.

"In general, our program was very much like the proof-of-concept research airplanes that we had done before," said Rutan. But, admittedly, there was a sizable gulp factor when SpaceShipOne first flew.

Before the maiden spaceflight, Rutan remembered an aerodynamics expert eyeing SpaceShipOne and its novel hinged "feathering" system. That unique feature had the rear half of the wing and its twin tail booms fold upward for atmospheric reentry, a position designed to increase drag, but keep the vehicle stable on descent.

"That expert told me it will spin like a top; it wouldn't be controllable if it's in feather," Rutan said. "You know, I didn't have a good answer for him."

Rutan said he was riding on wispy information. 

"I had no wind tunnel data in the feathered configuration. I had limited computational fluid dynamics data … no analysis of the dynamics. I couldn't tell whether or not he was right."

Concern resolved

When SpaceShipOne was dropped from the White Knight carrier plane at 40,000 feet (12,000 meters), pilot Mike Melvill didn't say a thing, according to Rutan. 

"That will get your ass puckered up if nothing else will," Rutan said. "And I'm thinking, 'For God's sake, tell us how it flies.' And I'll never forget when he said, 'It flies like a dream.' Right then and there one of the biggest concerns that I had was resolved."

SpaceShipOne sped from transonic to supersonic velocity, running its rocket motor for 15 seconds, and ascending to just above 62 miles (100 kilometers) over Earth. It therefore cleared the Kármán line, a widely recognized definition of the boundary of outer space. 

"I figured if we had bad flying qualities we are accelerating so fast," Rutan said, "you are going to quickly poke right through it."

When the rocket engine shut off, SpaceShipOne slipped into low speed and the feather system was engaged. The vehicle was successfully maneuvered down to tarmac heaven.

Above the fold

"I did recognize that it was historic, to achieve a non-government manned spaceflight," Rutan said. The flight achievement got "above the fold" newspaper attention around the world.

"It was the number two story for all of 2004. If they hadn't pulled Saddam Hussein out of his spider hole that year," Rutan said, "this would have been the number one story!"

Later that year, SpaceShipOne made two back-to-back suborbital flights well above 100 kilometers in altitude, solo piloted first by Melvill and then Brian Binnie, to snag the $10 million Ansari X Prize purse.

For Rutan, the voyage of SpaceShipOne that day was a huge milestone. "It should get a party every 10 years. And it certainly should get a big party on the 50th and the 100th anniversary."

Aspirational inspiration

"I'm guessing only the true space diehards are cognizant that the first SpaceShipOne suborbital spaceflight, piloted by Mike Melvill, occurred 20 years ago this week," said Alan Ladwig, author of  "See You In Orbit? Our Dream Of Spaceflight" (To Orbit Productions, 2019). "It was an important milestone for space tourism."

As the first time a privately built, privately funded spaceship made it to the final frontier, Melvill's critical test flight did attract media and public attention at the time, as Rutan noted. "The event was heralded as a new era when 'ordinary' people, private citizens, would have the opportunity to fly to experience weightlessness," Ladwig said.

When the X-Prize was announced in 1996, later to be renamed the Ansari X Prize, Ladwig recalled that it was predicted that a winner would be crowned in three to five years, with commercial tickets available one or two years after that. 

"Like so many space achievements, these predictions proved to be aspirational," Ladwig said. 

Related: Space tourism, 20 years in the making, is finally ready for launch

Industrial-strength space tourism 

Following the successful first spaceflight of SpaceShipOne, Ladwig remembers that Rutan promised that suborbital flights would "inspire and open up a new industry." 

"This prediction has been achieved. Both Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin now conduct passenger service, but the high ticket price is a deterrent for many to achieve their dream of spaceflight," said Ladwig. (Virgin Galactic currently charges $450,000 per seat for a suborbital trip; Blue Origin hasn't disclosed its ticket prices.)

And the connection between Virgin Galactic and SpaceShipOne is quite strong; Virgin has flown seven commercial suborbital flights to date, all with the recently retired VSS Unity space plane. Unity is a SpaceShipTwo vehicle, which, as its name suggests, is an evolved version of the pioneering SpaceShipOne. 

In highlighting the challenge to provide commercial service to and from suborbital space, Ladwig said it's worth remembering that the Ansari X Prize attracted 26 teams from seven countries, "but only two companies have the capability to help you achieve a space experience."

Over the past 50 years, experts have made bold predictions for a thriving space tourism industry, Ladwig relates.

For example, one space tourism sage predicted that. by 2030, some five million passengers could be taking trips to a necklace of hotels in low Earth orbit.

"It will take an extreme acceleration of flights to achieve such numbers," Ladwig suggests. "But Melvill's historic flight did give hope to all those who dream of seeing Earth from an orbital perspective."

Spark of innovation

"The prizewinning second flight of SpaceShipOne on its X Prize quest in 2004 seemed, at the time, to herald an imminent new era for commercial spaceflight," said Margaret Weitekamp, chair of the Space History department at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

"The reality took much longer to develop than its promoters hoped," Weitekamp told Space.com. "But the Ansari X Prize competition did spark innovations that brought renewed interest to suborbital human spaceflights."

Weitekamp added that the flown SpaceShipOne will return to public display in the National Air and Space Museum's building on the National Mall when the Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall reopens.

For more information on Burt Rutan's remarkable contributions to aerospace, you can go to the informative and comprehensive BRAB (Burt Rutan AutoBio) website, a work-in-progress collection that he started in 2020.

The crew, announced on Thursday (June 20), includes past Virgin Galactic American private astronaut Kellie Gerardi, who flew aboard Galactic 05 in November 2023, along with Canadian Shawna Pandya and Ireland's Norah Patten. All three are part of the non-profit International Institute for Astronautical Sciences (IIAS), whose mandate includes testing technologies in suborbital aircraft and spacecraft, and performing educational activities.

The three crew members will expand on research that Gerardi (also IIAS director of human spaceflight) performed during Galactic 05, focusing on fluid behavior with applications to human health, Virgin officials said in a statement.

Virgin, founded by Richard Branson, announced the news two weeks after the final flight of its VSS Unity spaceplane on June 8. That flight carried a Turkish researcher and three private astronauts to space after being released from the VSS Eve carrier vehicle. Delta will allow for more frequent flights than the earlier generation once it flies, Virgin has said repeatedly, but as the upgrade happens no spaceflights will occur.

Related: Virgin Galactic launches VSS Unity space plane on final suborbital spaceflight with crew of 6 (photos, video)

"Beyond honored to lead the next IIAS research mission, advance the scientific knowledge gained from my first spaceflight, and to introduce my fellow payload specialists," Gerardi wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Pandya, director of IIAS' space medicine group, thanked the organization for nine years of support so far. "It is not lost on me that I am the first named Canadian female commercial astronaut, and the fourth Indian origin female astronaut," she wrote on LinkedIn. "These communities have shaped who I am, and I promise to do you proud."

Patten, an aeronautical engineer and bioastronautics researcher who currently expected to be Ireland's first private astronaut, reposted Virgin Galactic's announcement on X with the message: "This", along with emojis for a rocket and a star.

Former NASA astronaut Daniel Tani, who is married to an Irish citizen, has also called himself an astronaut from Ireland.

The Delta vehicles should be able to fly up to twice a week, Virgin representatives have said, and test flights are expected in 2025 with commercial operations beginning the following year. Virgin's tickets currently cost $450,000, but other passengers bought at lower prices over the decades.

The main competitor for Virgin in suborbital space tourism is Blue Origin, founded by Amazon creator Jeff Bezos. The company sends people to space on a rocket and capsule both called New Shepard. Blue Origin has not revealed its ticket prices.

Blue Origin most recently sent its seventh group to space, including Ed Dwight, a 90-year-old first U.S. black astronaut candidate. Blue Origin had a two-year pause in crewed operations after an uncrewed research mission failure in September 2022.

This article was corrected on June 24 to remove reference to an astronaut not from Ireland, and to add reference to spacecraft testing.

Virgin Galactic shared an awe-inspiring video from the final flight of its VSS Unity spaceplane. 

The space plane's final commercial mission, called Galactic 07, took off from Spaceport America in southern New Mexico at 10:31 a.m. EDT (1431 GMT) on June 8. The suborbital flight carried a Turkish researcher and three private astronauts to an altitude of 44,562 feet (13,582 meters) before the plane dropped and ignited its rocket engine to carry the four passengers and two pilots to space and back.

"I'm most excited about looking at the Earth; getting the overview effect," a Galactic 07 crewmember says in the video, which the company shared on YouTube. "It provides perspective." 

The mission reached an altitude of 54.4 miles (87.5 km), marking the seventh, and final, commercial spaceflight by Virgin Galactic on Unity. The spaceplane is being retired to make way for the company's new Delta class of vehicles, which are expected to begin flight tests in late 2025 and commercial service in 2026.

Related: Virgin Galactic launches VSS Unity space plane on final suborbital spaceflight with crew of 6 (photos, video)

Among the passengers was Turkish research astronaut, Tuva Atasever, who conducted seven experiments during the suborbital flight. The experiments ranged from accurately dispensing and dosing an insulin pen in microgravity to monitoring brain activity in response to the cognitive shift caused by seeing the Earth from space, also known as the overview effect.

Unity's final flight attracted the largest crowd since the launch of Virgin Galactic's first fully crewed suborbital spaceflight in 2021, called Unity 22, officials said in the video. The crowd cheered and applauded as the spaceplane lifted off and then glided to a landing back at the spaceport approximately one hour later, at 11:41 a.m. EDT (1541 GMT). 

The video also captures footage from inside the space plane, including when Unity was released from Eve and fired its engines to reach space, where the crew experienced weightlessness and floated around the cabin in microgravity. Crowds on the ground were able to watch a full livestream of the flight and experience the success of Unity’s emotional final flight. 

"Once again, Virgin Galactic returning new astronauts to planet Earth, concluding VSS Unity's final space mission," a video voiceover says, and "paving the way for the next generation of commercial space flight."

Virgin Galactic launched six people to suborbital space on Saturday (June 8), launching a Turkish astronaut and three space tourists on what was the final voyage of the VSS Unity space plane.

Unity, attached to the belly of its carrier plane Eve,  took off from runway at Spaceport America in New Mexico at 10:31 a.m. EDT (1431 GMT) and carried to an altitude of 44,562 feet (13,582 meters) over the next hour, where it was dropped and ignited its rocket engine to carry two pilots and four passengers to space and back. The mission, called Galactic 07, reached an altitude of 54.4 miles (87.5 km) and marked the seventh commercial spaceflight by Virgin Galactic on Unity, which is being retired to make way for the company's new "Delta" class of spacecraft rolling out in 2026.

"I will need much more time to try and process what just happened," Tuva Atasever, the Turkish Space Agency astronaut on the flight, said in a post-flight press conference, adding that the view of Earth was indescribable. "It's not something you can describe with adjectives. It's an experiential thing … you just feel it in your gut."

Atasever's trip on on Galactic 07 was brokered by Axiom Space, a company that also flew a Turkish astronaut to the International Space Station with SpaceX on the private Ax-3 mission earlier this year. Atasever was a backup astronaut on the Ax-3 flight and oversaw three different experiments on Galactic 07.

Joining Atasever on the Virgin Galactic flight were VSS Unity commander Nicola Pecile and pilot Jameel Janjua. Virgin Galactic pilots Andy Edgell and C.J. Sturckow, a former NASA astronaut, flew the VMS Eve carrier plane. 

Related: Virgin Galactic launches 1st Ukrainian woman to space  on Galactic 06

After Unity landed, Virgin Galactic unveiled the identities of the three paying passengers on the flight. They were:

• Anand "Andy" Harish Sadhwani of California;
• Irving Izchak Pergament if New York;
• Giorgi Manenti of Italy.

Sadhwani was born in Houston and been fascinated with space since he was 5 years old after a tour of NASA's Saturn V rocket. He has a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and dual master's degrees in mechanical engineering and aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford. He works as a principal propulsion engineer at SpaceX. He wore the flags of the U.S. and India on his flight suit to honor both his home country and that of his parents, according to a mission profile. 

Pergament is a New York-based real estate developer who grew up in Israel and has had a lifelog dream to reach space. "My life is a blend of my love for my family, my professional success and philanthropy, and a continual chase after the thrill of flight, now reaching for the stars," he said in a statement.  He wore the flags of the U.S. and Israel on his flight suit.

Manenti is a London-based hotel and resort investment strategy advisor who prefers travel experiences over material possessions, according to a mission profile. Seeing Earth from space was a surreal experience, he said. "The feeling of being on the other side is tremendously exciting, this time looking down, admiring Earth in its [majestic] splendor," Manenti said in a statement. He wore the flags of Italy and the European Union on his flight suit.

Unity's last flight

The VSS Unity space plane landed back at Spaceport America at 11:41 a.m. EDT (1541 GMT), marking only its seventh commercial spaceflight for Virgin Galactic and 12th crewed spaceflight overall. In all, Virgin Galactic flew the space plane just 32 times, including non-space test flights. 

But Unity will fly no more. Instead, Virgin Galactic is grounding Unity's SpaceShipTwo design in favor of its new "Delta Class" of spacecraft that are designed to fly more often. 

"This vehicle was revolutionary," Virgin Galactic president Mike Moses said in the post-launch press conference. "We tested it, we flew it, we demonstrated and prove to the world that commercial human spaceflight is possible with private funding for private companies."

Unity's first fully-crewed suborbital spaceflight launched Virgin Galactic's founder, the billionaire Sir Richard Branson, and others in July 2021 on the Unity 22 mission, which followed three previous skeleton-crewed test flights. By 2023, the company was flying monthly flights for space tourists and research customers. 

"So, seven commercial space flights, a single vehicle flying six times in six months last year, that's groundbreaking," Moses said. "The fact that we can take this vehicle back to back to back on a monthly basis is is really revolutionary."

The new Delta class of spacecraft will be able to fly at least twice a week, about eight times the rate of SpaceShipTwo, with Virgin Galactic planning to build at least two to start its new fleet. 

"We're going to field in 2026 two spaceships, our mothership Eve, that's 750 astronauts a year going to space," Moses said of the new fleet's flight capacity. "That's more than have gotten to space in the 60 year history of spaceflight to date."

A pricey ride for thrills ... and science

Galactic 07 was Virgin Galactic's second mission of 2024. Its first flight of the year, Galactic 06, saw the first Ukrainian woman reach (suborbital) space.

Tickets for these flights are quite the investment, typically selling for $450,000. Passengers on Virgin Galactic's spaceplane experience a few minutes of weightlessness and get to see a view of Earth that very few get to see in a lifetime.

The suborbital spaceflight will also carried research payloads from Purdue University and University of California, Berkeley. According to the company's statement, Purdue's experiment focused on the "propellant slosh in fuel tanks of maneuvering spacecraft" while U.C. Berkeley tested out a new type of 3D printing in microgravity.

Since 2018, Virgin Galactic has flown payloads as part of NASA's Flight Opportunities program and most recently was selected to be a contracted flight provider for NASA for the next five years.

Axiom Space, a Houston-based private spaceflight company, has completed three crewed trips to date to the International Space Station, and has its fourth mission, (Ax-4), targeted for October at the earliest. The company has partnered with Virgin Galactic on several previous flights.

"Axiom Space's commitment to enabling access to space and providing opportunities for scientific discovery beyond Earth aligns closely with Virgin Galactic's mission," Tejpaul Bhatia, chief revenue officer of Axiom Space, said in Virgin Galactic's statement. "We are very excited about this upcoming Galactic 07 flight."

The Galactic 07 mission follows the previous in January where an alignment pin detached unexpectedly from VMS Eve after VSS Unity separated. Although no one was in any danger on the flight, the company notified the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) so that both entities could conduct an investigation of the issue to prevent a repeat for future missions. 

Corrective steps were  taken by Virgin Galactic to ensure there will not be a repeat on Galactic 07. 

Editor's note: Space.com Editor-in-Chief contributed to this report. This story was updated at 5 p.m. ET to include details about the final flight of VSS Unity and its launch success.

In the movements and expansion of civilizations and peoples of the past, it has often been the case that, as one group expanded, it was at the cost of another. We have been driven in the past by changes in climate, the pressures of our populations, the collapse of our economies, the oppression of our ideas and beliefs, or the greed of those with a lot of stuff to gather more stuff under their control. Societies have also been forced to move to new lands by the movements of others being driven by others moving into their own, and so on. 

Contrary to current mythology, all of human history, everywhere on the planet has been an unending story of conquest. Around 2,000 years ago, Roman legions brutally conquered the indigenous tribes of Spain, France and the British Isles. One thousand five hundred years later, their progeny then slaughtered the indigenous tribes of a half dozen continents. In the time between, the Aztecs, Incas and Mayans slaughtered and enslaved the smaller tribes and kingdoms around them to expand their domains, while the Mongols conquered China and parts of eastern Europe. A bit later than that, the Zulu swept across southern Africa, conquering their neighbors, only to run into the British, who tried to conquer them. And while some groups may rise in righteous anger over the more recent takings and injustices faced by their ancestors, if one looks far enough back, it becomes clear that, in many cases, their ancestors or ancestors' ancestors took what they had from someone else. 

Related: Who owns the Moon? Law and outer space treaties

Too often, we have witnessed the death-rattling chagrin of peoples being "discovered" by others arriving in their "New Worlds." Too often, we have characterized the progress of one society by the decline of another or its usurpation as a conquered nation. It has become almost axiomatic to some historians that this is just how things are and will always be. After all, we live on one planet and have done so for millions of years, and the odds are that, at some point, someone from somewhere else has been where you are going, and if they are still there, they will be in your way. 

Not so on the High Frontier of space. So far as we know, there is no one out there for us to conquer, no one whose lands we will steal or confiscate for our own. There is no one to displace, no one to eliminate, and no one nearby upon whose ashes we will build our own civilization. And so, at last, this ugly aspect of human history has a chance to end.

Rather, it appears that the solar system is empty of intelligence except our own. It is in that sense ours, as it belongs to no one else, not in the way that greed and the grabbing of finite resources and wealth have been taken or possessed in the past, but in the sense that we are responsible for it, We, All of Us — the entire human race. It may be possible there is primitive life to be found under a frozen rock on Mars or beneath the under-oceans of the Jupiter moon Europa or Saturn's Enceladus. In that case, we are obliged to treat it with care, treasuring it and protecting it, even as we move on and around it to fill the immensity of what remains of our neighborhood. The solar system is ours. It is our responsibility. To explore, inhabit, harvest, share and protect — or to pillage, destroy, covet and command. 

To some, this need to take, dominate, and control is a human trait. I agree that, especially in the beginning stages of opening the Frontier, it will be hard to imagine what some call "human nature" changing. But if you stop and think about it, there is no set "human nature" regarding greed or the need to conquer and own other peoples and their lands. I believe it to be more of a historical social norm or even a socially acceptable habit. Domination culture is based on control of technologies and resources, fed by the "have and have not" dynamic and used by power-hungry individuals with traumatic pasts, who have the ability and tools to gaslight and manipulate the elements of society around them, like governments.

As we open the High Frontier, these habits and tendencies will come with us — at least at first. The constant conflicts and geographic games of the nations of Earth will follow us into space. They already have. Keep in mind that the first space race was between rival governments. The next, already underway, is also between ideologically and territorially competing powers. The first was largely symbolic, resulting in little more than flags and footprints left behind by the winner. Today's is far different, and the stakes nothing less than domination of the solar system. From low Earth orbit to who will control the resources of the Moon, the game is afoot, so to speak.

Related: China moving at 'breathtaking speed' in final frontier, Space Force says

But suppose we can get past this first phase of government's trying to use space to dominate Earth and establish the first viable communities in the beyond. These can be based on underlying principles that focus on caring for life, evolving humanity and exploring the cosmos, and yes, funded by new industries and vast resources we no longer have to rip out of the MotherWorld. In that case, we may have a chance to move to a new level of human culture, where war, conquest, and control make way for more peaceful, collaborative efforts to expand the domain of life for all.

I am not speaking of a naïve utopia here but an opportunity that will be forced on us by pragmatic realities. The vast distances, the availability of endless supplies of materials, resources, and energy, and the susceptibility of fragile humans and their constructs to destruction all mitigate for mutual support and against war and conquest. In addition, the rise of our ability via additive manufacturing, robotics, and AI to transform those vast resources and energy into everything we need will eventually mean we don't need to take it from anyone else. After all, if everything I need is provided by the resources around me, I have unlimited clean energy and the machines to convert those resources into anything I need or can imagine, why do I want to take it from someone else? Why go to the trouble?

Again, to be clear, I am not ignoring the dark motivations of humanity's biggest enemy, those (mainly male) aberrations from the good citizens who play on their society's insufficiencies to feed their own bottomless needs for power. Indeed, it has been these damaged humans who have driven much of our history. But to succeed, or at least to undergird their mobilization of entire nations on their behalf, they have most often had to rely on a base of people lacking in comfort or angry at the inability of their states to provide economic or social stability. Even many of what appear to be religious conquests, when examined closely, boil down to control of resources and the fight between haves and have-nots manipulated by very specific people to feed their own spiritual insufficiencies.

On the other hand, most people are good. 99.9% of people on the planet just want to enjoy life. They just want a place to live, meet their needs, and have some fun along the way. Within that group are the 1% who always seem to have far more than the rest, and the 0.1% who seek control of everyone else — almost always by controlling their government. This is a societal problem, not a geographic one. It results more from issues of morality and control of governments than from resources or locations. Take scarce resources and limits on opportunities to engage in risk-reward mobility out of the equation and you've removed their biggest tools.

Speaking of haves and have-nots, I cannot write this without acknowledging what some outsiders see as an entitled group of "super haves" leading the way off the planet that older generations of "haves" nearly destroyed. Fortunately, in this case, that negative assessment is wrong — perhaps for the first time in history. While it is convenient to cast the billionaires building the rocketships as space-based colonialist conquerors, it is also both lazy and wrong. 

It is lazy because any deep examination of their histories or the motives of the movement they are part of would reveal a core benevolence and love for humanity and life driving them forward. For example, Jeff Bezos was, like me, a young disciple of Prof. Gerard K. O'Neill. O'Neill's groundbreaking 1973 book "The High Frontier" was built on his early predictions of the need to fight climate change by creating space solar power satellites, while turning Earth into a garden planet. That's Jeff's plan for his space company, Blue Origin. Meanwhile, he's also donated billions to the environment and other causes. Richard Branson is a leading environmentalist and champion of humanistic causes. Even Elon Musk (whose recent political utterings include many I do not share) has helped bring electric cars and solar powered homes into the mainstream, and began his quest for space by wanting to place a symbolic terrarium of Earthlife on Mars.

Related: As space billionaires take flight, 'the right stuff' for space travel enters a new era

It is wrong because, at least in the case of the three most well-known billionaire rocketeers, even their more well-informed critics admit they are not opening space to make money. They made their money to help open space. The recent attack made by President Obama (whom I revere) — using the tired refrain I will paraphrase as, "Why spend their money out there when we have so many problems down here" — highlighted how ridiculous this dogma is. Had I been there, I would have asked him which of his favorite professional basketball teams (funded by billionaires and taxpayers) should be shut down and the savings donated to the homeless. Love them or their terrestrial business practices, or hate them, these people are trying to do something for the good with at least some of their profits. They are not the robber barons or conquistadors of bygone eras, and it is a cheap exercise of absurdist eco-populism to cast them otherwise.

Of course, this doesn't mean that ego isn't involved. That is part of human nature, to be sure. Be it an artist, athlete, architect, surgeon, chef or scientist, we want to be the best, and if possible achieve great things. At the level of a multi-billionaire, it means, for some, applying that skill they have — accumulating and investing vast sums of money — into something they see as having the most significant impact on the future of their society. For Bill Gates it may mean fighting today's diseases. For these, it means helping build a tomorrow worth living into. In other eras, they might have been underwriting Arctic explorers, funding the first telescopes, or being patrons for a Michelangelo or Da Vinci. We have to separate debates about the system that enables the accumulation of such wealth from what they do with it. For my part, I'll take the fact that what they are funding is not about taking anything for themselves, but giving future generations the chance to have it all.

That means us and our children. All of us. The new rocketships they and others in the revolution are building will finally unshackle us from the government's ownership of the heavens and give us the keys to our tomorrow. Be it an American billionaire's fleet or even one of the many clones being built by Chinese teams, the cost of going out there is about to plummet. This means that, within the following decades, most middle-class people won’t have to settle for science fiction or watching government employees perform space for them; they will be able to go out there themselves. It also means it will be within the means of even the poorest nations to send their scientists, explorers and entrepreneurs to participate in this new renaissance. 

For better or worse, we will take who we are with us wherever we go. But things improve each time we go somewhere new — if we do so based on even the minimum of enlightened self-conceptualization. We improve.

History shows that, due to advances in technology, while the scale of the pain and devastation any single human or group can cause by a single act has grown dramatically, be it the pull of a trigger or the dropping of a bomb, the frequency and social acceptance of such crimes has dropped. It may not seem like it given our media inundation with scenes of violence and evil, but overall humanity is progressing. For example, today rape is a war crime rather than a routine part of battle, and as a male, you no longer have to carry a sword as part of your daily clothing. We improve. We grow. We will still have violence, greed and crime. They will follow us into space. But again, if we do it right, they will fade even more from their once central role in our society.

I have often been asked at my college talks why we don't wait until humanity is more mature before we go out into space. My reply: "When did you grow up the most? Was it while you lived at home with your parents? Or was it when you went out into the world?"

I do not propose perfection. I propose turning our focus in a new direction.

This new High Frontier gives us the chance to redefine our relationship to each other, to our Mother Earth, and to our future. We can use all we have learned of our history, all we know from science, and all we can imagine from our works of art and fiction and apply them to try to get it right this time.

Related: How living on Mars could challenge colonists (infographic)

I propose hope.

Imagine a future where the goal of human society is not to grab as much of a limited pie as we can but to expand the availability of everything to everyone, because all can access an unlimited supply of all we need.

Imagine a humanity driven not by the accumulation of whatever we can accumulate in a limited system but by the desire to experience, explore and create new places to be — everywhere and anywhere we can.

Imagine a society that measures itself not on what it can appropriate from others, but what it can learn and create; not on what it controls, but on what its people can do with their lives, down here or out there, as part of a vital species ending its childhood and awakening to the possible.

The opening of the Frontier offers us the chance to move outward for any of these reasons or for any reason we choose, any reason You choose.

There will be dark moments in the years to come. Political games and power grabs have already begun among the government players. Land grabs will come next — again, not by the people, but by governments. Keep this in mind. This is why we need those who are willing to put their own lives and fortunes on the line for this cause to do so. So that you can. This is the biggest change we can make on this Frontier — giving it to you. By opening the universe to humanity as widely as possible, bypassing government gatekeepers and throwing open the airlock to everyone, and democratizing access to the possibilities offered by everywhere else beyond Earth, we can create the option of an endlessly expanding set of options for all.

Most will stay here. Most always stay. That's fine. Those who choose to move upward will do so because they are bored or excited, tired or seeking a challenge, seeking a fortune or wanting to share the opportunity, oppressed or not oppressed; it does not matter. We must make it possible for them to go — for whatever reason they choose. Within a framework built on our highest principles, we must ensure that as many of us have the chance to do so as we can. What does matter is that, as soon as possible, we begin, and as we begin, we do it right.

We must learn to trust ourselves, even as we use this incredible opportunity to reinvent ourselves. We must reach for what we can be, even as we recall and are informed by what we have been. 

We've gotten so much wrong, so many times. 

This time it can be different, if We decide to Be different. 

Remember: This time we go as one humanity. 

This time we take it from no one. 

Instead, this time, we give it to all.

Rick Tumlinson is the founder of SpaceFund, a venture capital firm investing in space startups. He also founded the Space Frontier Foundation, Earthlight Foundation and New Worlds Institute and is a founding board member of the X Prize Foundation. 

The company announced on Wednesday (May 1) that it's targeting June 8 for its seventh commercial spaceflight, a suborbital jaunt called, fittingly enough, Galactic 07.

It will be Virgin Galactic's second spaceflight of the year, after the Galactic 06 mission on Jan. 26, and its 12th overall to date.

Related: Virgin Galactic launches researchers to suborbital space on 5th commercial flight (video)

Virgin Galactic uses an air-launch system that consists of two vehicles: A carrier aircraft called VMS Eve and a suborbital spaceliner known as VSS Unity. 

Eve lifts off from a runway with Unity beneath its wings, then drops the spacecraft at an altitude of about 45,000 feet (13,700 meters). Unity then fires up its onboard rocket motor, blasting its way to suborbital space. 

Passengers aboard the space plane experience a few minutes of weightlessness and get to see Earth against the blackness of space. A ticket to ride on Unity currently sells for $450,000.

Galactic 07 will depart from Spaceport America in southwestern New Mexico, carrying four passengers in Unity's cabin. Virgin Galactic has not yet identified these people, but the company has given us a bit of information about them.

Three are private astronauts, one apiece from New York, California and Italy. The fourth is "an Axiom Space-affiliated researcher astronaut who will conduct multiple human-tended experiments," Virgin Galactic wrote Wednesday in a Galactic 07 mission update.

Axiom Space is a Houston-based company that has organized three crewed trips to the International Space Station to date, all of them using SpaceX hardware. Axiom also plans to assemble and operate its own space station in Earth orbit later in the 2020s. 

During the Galactic 06 mission in January, an alignment pin that helps secure Unity to Eve detached unexpectedly from the carrier craft. This happened after Unity had separated and begun flying freely and did not endanger anyone involved in the flight, according to Virgin Galactic. 

Nevertheless, the company conducted an investigation along with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). That work is now done, and steps have been taken to ensure the issue doesn't crop up on Galactic 07 or other future flights, according to Virgin Galactic. 

"The FAA has accepted Virgin Galactic's final investigation report, as well as the corrective actions that have been made to enhance the retention mechanism of the pin and the addition of a secondary retention mechanism," the company wrote in Wednesday's update.

The suit alleges that Virgin Galactic has not paid $26.4 million in invoices for work related to the development of a new "mothership" aircraft intended to power Virgin's next-generation suborbital space planes. The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on March 21, according to a SpaceNews report.

Virgin Galactic argues that the lawsuit is baseless in both facts and law and intends to defend itself vigorously, according to comments made to SpaceNews by a company spokesperson.

Related: Virgin Galactic picks Boeing subsidiary to build new carrier planes for space tourism flights

Suborbital space tourism provider Virgin Galactic uses a carrier aircraft mothership to haul a space plane to an altitude of about 50,000 feet (15,000 meters). Then the space plane falls free and begins its rocket-powered journey to suborbital space. 

The company selected Aurora Flight Sciences in 2022 to build two new motherships. These would be delivered in 2025 and replace the current VMS Eve and be rated to fly as many as 200 times a year.

However, work halted after the completion of preliminary design work in May 2023. Boeing and Aurora claim that the project's budget and timeline constraints led to the conclusion that the new mothership could not be developed as Virgin Galactic envisioned.

Additionally, Boeing and Aurora accuse Virgin Galactic of misappropriating trade secrets. These specifically concern technical specifications and modeling equations for aircraft performance, passed inadvertently to Virgin as part of the project. Boeing and Aurora have requested Virgin destroy this proprietary information. 

Virgin declined to do so, claiming it had intellectual property rights to them as part of the agreement, according to the report.

The company has also shifted focus away from developing a new mothership, concentrating on producing its Delta-class space plane, with plans to continue using VMS Eve for upcoming test and commercial flights.

For a few minutes on Jan. 26, 20 people were in space at the same time. The International Space Station (ISS) hosted 11 of them — seven long-term crewmembers and four visitors on the private Ax-3 mission — and three occupied China's Tiangong space station.

The other six were aboard Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity space plane, which reached suborbital space on the company's Galactic 06 mission. Four of those six were passengers, while two were piloting Unity on Galactic 06, which lasted about an hour from liftoff to touchdown. 

At the moment, there are 14 people off Earth — the three Tiangong residents, the seven long-term ISS astronauts and the four Ax-3 flyers, who departed the orbiting lab on Wednesday (Feb. 7) in their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule and are scheduled to splash down on Friday morning (Feb. 9).

Related: The most extreme human spaceflight records

Virgin Galactic was also involved the first time 20 humans were in space at once, a milestone notched on May 23 of last year. The allocations were similar on that day: six people on Unity (on a flight called Unity 25, the last mission before Virgin Galactic began commercial service), three on Tiangong and 11 on the ISS (seven long-term spaceflyers, along with the four crewmembers of the private Ax-2 mission).

Not everyone will recognize the 20-person record, however, because Virgin Galactic flights get just 55 miles (88 kilometers) or so above Earth at their highest point. 

That's high enough to reach space according to NASA and the U.S. military, which set the boundary at 50 miles (80 km) up. But the international community generally goes with the "Kármán line," which lies at an altitude of 62 miles (100 km).

Indeed, Guinness World Records puts the most-people-in-space mark at 19, set during the NS-19 suborbital flight of Blue Origin's New Shepard vehicle on Dec. 11, 2021. New Shepard gets slightly above the Kármán line on its brief missions. 

The record for most people in orbit is perhaps more meaningful, given how much energy and effort are required to circle our planet. That mark is 17, set during a brief stretch in May 2023 when Tiangong hosted two three-person crews while 11 people (including the Ax-2 astronauts) lived aboard the ISS.

Hopefully, these numbers will seem laughably small 10 or 15 years from now. Several private space stations are in development at the moment, and both NASA and a China-led coalition aim to get people back to the moon over the next decade or so. 

In addition, SpaceX is developing a massive rocket called Starship to help settle both the moon and Mars. So 19 or 20 people off Earth at once will be just the beginning, if at least some of these space dreams come true.

The company said that during the Galactic 06 commercial spaceflight on Jan. 26, VMS Eve lost an alignment pin used to ensure that VSS Unity is held in the proper position when mated. As the two joined aircraft climb in altitude, the mated duo experience strong forces such as drag; the alignment pin helps to distribute these forces along Eve's structural hardpoint, but does not support the weight of VMS Unity. Virgin Galactic says the pin detached after the space plane had separated from its mothership as planned, at an altitude of about 45,000 feet (13,700 meters).

Virgin Galactic notified the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) of the issue on Jan. 31, according to a company statement. Despite the lost pin, the company says there was no danger and no damage to either aircraft, and, because the flight took place in controlled airspace, there was little hazard posed to anything below it. 

Related: Virgin Galactic launches 1st Ukrainian woman to space  —  and 3 others  —  on Galactic 06 suborbital flight (video)

"'Galactic 06' was a safe and successful flight that was conducted in accordance with Virgin Galactic's rigorous flight procedures and protocols," the company wrote in the statement. "At no time did the detached alignment pin pose a safety impact to the vehicles or the crew on board."

Virgin Galactic will conduct an investigation alongside the FAA and provide an update ahead of its next mission, Galactic 07, set to lift off sometime in the second quarter of 2024.

The FAA issued a statement that says Virgin Galactic will be grounded until the investigation is completed. "A return to flight is based on the FAA determining that any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety," the FAA's statement reads, according to CNN. "In addition, Virgin Galactic must request and receive approval from the FAA to modify its license that incorporates the corrective actions and meets all other licensing requirements."

Aside from the dropped pin, Galactic 06 was noteworthy in that it sent the first Ukrainian woman to space (depending on where one defines space; Virgin Galactic's flights don't quite reach the boundary many people use to define the edge of space, known as the Karman line).

The flight also marked one of the last for Unity, if all goes according to schedule. The company has plans to retire its current fleet of suborbital vehicles in favor of its new "Delta class" space planes, which will be able to fly at a cadence of two missions per week. The first Delta class vehicle is expected to begin test flight campaigns in 2025, with commercial flights opening up in 2026.

A ticket aboard the six-passenger Unity currently costs $450,000. 

Virgin Galactic just launched its sixth commercial spaceflight.

That mission, called Galactic 06, sent four private passengers to suborbital space and back, among them the first Ukrainian woman ever to reach the final frontier. 

"Welcome back to Earth, #Galactic06! Our pilots, crew and spaceship have landed safely at Spaceport America, New Mexico," Virgin Galactic said in a post on X shortly after touchdown today.

Related: Virgin Galactic launches researchers to suborbital space on 5th commercial flight (video)

As that post noted, Galactic 06 flew from Spaceport America, in southwestern New Mexico. Virgin Galactic's carrier aircraft, VMS Eve, lifted off from the site around noon EST (1700 GMT; 10 a.m. local time), with the four-passenger space plane VSS Unity under its wings.

Eve dropped Unity at an altitude of about 45,000 feet (13,700 meters), at which point the space plane ignited its rocket motor and headed up to suborbital space.

Galactic 06's passengers experienced a few minutes of weightlessness and got to see their home planet against the blackness of space before coming down to Earth for a runway landing at Spaceport America about 90 minutes after liftoff. (Virgin Galactic did not livestream the mission; it posted updates on X during the flight.)

Virgin Galactic didn't reveal the passengers' identities in the leadup to Galactic 06, giving only their home nations and/or states. One is from Texas, one is from California, one is an Austrian and the other hails from Nevada and Ukraine, the company said.

We got their names today: Lina Borozdina, Franz Haider, Neil Kornswiet and Robie Vaughn. Borozdina became the first Ukrainian woman to reach space, according to Virgin Galactic. 

Commander C.J. Sturckow and pilot Nicola Pecile flew VSS Unity today, and Michael Masucci and Dan Alix were at the controls of VMS Eve.

Galactic 06 was Virgin's first mission of the year, and one of the final flights for Unity, if all goes according to plan. The company has said that it will soon retire the space plane, which has conducted all Virgin spaceflights to date, to focus on its forthcoming "Delta class" vehicle.

Each Delta plane will be able to fly up to twice per week, according to Virgin representatives. The first Delta vehicle is on track to start test flights in 2025, and the company wants it to begin commercial operations the following year.

Virgin Galactic has a competitor in the suborbital space tourism industry — Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' aerospace company, which takes people and payloads aloft with a rocket-capsule combo called New Shepard.

New Shepard recently returned to flight after suffering a failure during an uncrewed research mission in September 2022. The vehicle hasn't carried people since August 2022.

Tickets to ride the six-passenger Unity currently cost $450,000. Blue Origin hasn't revealed its ticket prices.

Editor's note: This story has been corrected to state that a seat to fly with Virgin Galactic currently costs $450,000, rather than $400,000. VSS Unity also currently seats four passengers, not six, as originally stated.

The launch window for the crewed suborbital mission, known as Galactic 06, opens on Jan. 26. And, to help remind us of this fact and build up interest in the flight, Virgin Galactic just released the mission's patch.

"The patch represents the Ukrainian, Austrian and United States nationalities showcasing our crew's global background. One star for each Pilot and Astronaut crew and a central seven-point star denoting mountains and continents conquered by members of the crew," the company wrote in a post on X on Monday (Jan. 22) that showcased the patch.

Four private spaceflyers will make the trip on Galactic 06, Virgin Galactic has said. The company has not yet released their identities. It's also unclear if the mission will be livestreamed; if so, you can watch it here at Space.com, courtesy of the company.

Related: Virgin Galactic launches researchers to suborbital space on 5th commercial flight (video)

Virgin Galactic employs an air-launch system, which consists of a carrier aircraft called VMS Eve and a space plane named VSS Unity. 

Eve lifts off from a runway with Unity beneath its wings and drops the spacecraft at an altitude of about 45,000 feet (13,700 meters). Unity then ignites its onboard rocket motor, powering itself to suborbital space.

Passengers aboard the space plane experience a few minutes of weightlessness and get to see Earth against the blackness of space before coming back down for a runway landing. Virgin Galactic is currently selling seats aboard the six-passenger vehicle for $400,000 apiece.

Galactic 06 will be one of Unity's final spaceflights, if all goes according to plan; Virgin Galactic intends to ground the vehicle to focus on developing its "Delta class" of space plane.

Each Delta vehicle will be capable of flying up to twice per week, company representatives have said. The first Delta space plane is expected to start test flights next year and begin commercial operations in 2026.

Here's a rundown of some of the highlights, from the highly anticipated debut of SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket to the safe landing on Earth of NASA's first-ever pristine asteroid sample.

Related: 8 ways that SpaceX has transformed spaceflight

SpaceX's Starship launches first 2 test flights

Last year, we saw SpaceX make some significant headway in the company's development of its next-generation launch vehicle, Starship. The fully stacked rocket lifted off for the first time on April 20.

That flight lasted about 4 minutes. During the test, Starship's upper stage failed to separate from its Super Heavy booster. The vehicle began toppling end-over-end through the sky, ultimately reaching an explosive end with an autodestruct command. Super Heavy's 33 Raptor engines also blasted out a crater in the concrete beneath the launch pad at SpaceX's Starbase facility in South Texas, prompting upgrades to both the rocket and ground infrastructure. 

Starship's next flight was delayed, pending the conclusion of investigations led by the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) into the causes and consequences of Starship's April 20 mishap. SpaceX enacted 63 "corrective actions" at the direction of the FAA and was finally cleared to launch Starship again about seven months later, in November.

Starship launched for the second time Nov. 18. A water deluge system installed beneath the pad, and a new "hot-fire" staging system incorporated into Starship's launch procedures, solved two of the major issues the vehicle experienced during its first test, but Starship again failed to complete its full flight profile. A short time after stage separation, Super Heavy exploded, followed shortly by a communications loss with the Starship upper stage and its subsequent destruction.

After the November launch, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk voiced optimism that the third Starship test flight could lift off shortly after, in December. And, in the middle of the month, SpaceX rolled Starship hardware to the pad for testing ahead of that anticipated launch. However, that flight still hasn't happened.

Major science missions

2023 was a great year for science missions launching into space. In April, the penultimate launch of Europe's Ariane 5 rocket sent the European Space Agency's (ESA) JUICE spacecraft on a journey to the Jovian system to study three of Jupiter's largest moons.

JUICE (short for "Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer") will spend the next eight years traveling to the gas giant, completing several gravity-assist maneuvers around Earth and Venus during the interim years. Once JUICE arrives at Jupiter in July 2031, it will begin studying the big moons Ganymede, Callisto and Europa, all of which are believed to contain liquid-water oceans beneath their icy, outer layers.

Another ESA mission launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in July of last year, to study and map the "dark universe." The Euclid telescope is designed to study dark matter and dark energy, and will spend the next six years scoping out areas of the universe outside our Milky Way galaxy.

A third science mission, NASA's Psyche probe, launched on a Falcon Heavy in October. Psyche is on a 2.2 billion-mile (3.5 billion kilometers) journey to an asteroid of the same name, which is composed primarily of nickel and iron. Scientists believe the asteroid 16 Psyche may be the remnant of an ancient protoplanetary core, and they hope its study will yield clues into the processes of planetary formation.

OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return landing

The return capsule from NASA's first mission to retrieve samples from an asteroid touched town in September of last year. OSIRIS-REx launched in 2016 and spent two years traveling to its target asteroid, Bennu. After an extensive survey in orbit around the space rock, OSIRIS-REx maneuvered to the asteroid's surface to collect its samples in October 2020.

After another few years in space, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft's trajectory brought it back toward Earth, providing a window to eject the probe's sample return capsule on Sept. 24. As the capsule shot through Earth's atmosphere, the craft's heat shield protected the asteroid samples despite friction-induced temperatures as high as 5,300 degrees Fahrenheit (2,900 degrees Celsius) and speeds up to 27,000 mph (43,450 kph).

Following its fiery flight, the sample return capsule successfully deployed its main parachute and touched down for a soft landing at the Department of Defense's Utah Test and Training Range.

In a twist, NASA has yet to open OSIRIS-REx's main sample container, and is developing a new tool in order to safely remove its cover. However, even with the main samples still sealed shut, enough material was found to have collected outside the main sample container to exceed OSIRIS-REx's mission targets. 

Though this is not the first material recovered from an asteroid in space, it is NASA's first such effort, and the largest amount snagged to date. Once the agency is able to open the probe's sample container, it plans to send 25% of the Bennu samples to more than 200 scientists across the globe, including those representing the space agencies of other nations.

Following the separation of its return capsule, the main OSIRIS-REx spacecraft changed its course toward a different target, an asteroid named Apophis. Now on a new mission called OSIRIS-APEX, the spacecraft will reach Apophis in 2029.

India lands on the moon

India became the fourth nation to successfully land on the moon when its Chandrayaan-3 mission achieved the feat in August of last year. Chandrayaan-3's landing duo consisted of two vehicles, the Vikram lander and the Pragyan rover. The Chandrayaan-3 propulsion module remained in lunar orbit to perform its own research.

The lander-rover duo touched in the moon's southern hemisphere, at around 70 degrees south, on Aug. 23. Once on the surface, Pragyan exited Vikram to begin its mission of analyzing the lunar soil and other surface material. 

A few days after landing, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) released an image of Vikram, snapped by Pragyan as it rolled along the surface of the moon. Their primary mission goals accomplished, both the rover and lander were later placed in sleep mode, as the lunar night set in on their landing site. However, after the dark, two-week lunar frost, teams at ISRO were unable to wake the vehicles.

Russia's moon crash

Russia also launched a mission to land on the moon during 2023. Unfortunately, however, its attempt was not successful. 

Luna-25, the first Soviet/Russian lunar mission in 47 years, launched from the Vostochny Cosmodrome, in Russia's eastern Amur Region, on Aug. 10. Its mission was to land in the moon's south polar region, near Boguslawsky Crater, but a malfunction during one of the spacecraft's engine burns caused the probe to crash into the lunar surface.

"At about 14:57 Moscow time [on Aug. 19], communication with the Luna-25 spacecraft was interrupted," the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, wrote in a Telegram update (in Russian; translation by Google). "The measures taken on August 19 and 20 to search for the device and get into contact with it did not produce any results."

Several days later, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) photographed the location of Luna-25's crash, and the crater its impact created.

Frank Rubio sets record for longest US spaceflight

International Space Station (ISS) Expedition 68/69 Flight Engineer Frank Rubio broke the U.S. single-spaceflight duration record last year. Rubio and his Russian cosmonaut crewmates, Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, launched to the ISS on Sept. 21, 2022, and were originally scheduled for a six-month stint aboard the orbital laboratory.

However, their MS-22 Soyuz spacecraft, which was supposed to carry them back to Earth, sprang a coolant leak in December 2022. 

A replacement Soyuz (MS-23) was sent up as their ride home, but Rubio and his crewmates were unable to leave the space station without getting a replacement crew in place — which wasn't possible until September of last year.

Finally, Rubio and crew were able to return to Earth aboard the MS-23 Soyuz, landing in Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan on Sept. 27, 2023. In total, Rubio spent 371 continuous days in space, breaking the previous U.S. spaceflight record of 355 days, held by NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei.

Russian spacecraft leak

About that Soyuz leak.

The MS-22 Soyuz launched with Rubio, Prokopyev and Petelin on Sept. 21, 2022, and docked with the ISS later that day. All was nominal for the trio's first few months, but just a couple of weeks before the end of 2022, the Soyuz spacecraft sprang a significant leak, draining all its coolant out into space.

The leak ostensibly stranded Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio aboard the space station with no way home, though contingencies were put into place should the ISS crew need to evacuate in an emergency situation. An empty replacement Soyuz arrived at the station in February, finally offering the three a dedicated ride back to Earth.

However, the Soyuz they received (MS-23) was originally slated to fly Expedition 69's replacement crew. Its use in place of MS-22 meant the next ISS crew couldn't launch to the space station until Soyuz MS-24 was ready to fly, which wasn't until September, when Rubio, Prokopyev and Petelin finally came home.

The leaky Soyuz MS-22 returned to Earth without crew, and was recovered by Roscosmos for evaluation in March of last year. Russian officials have yet to announce a definitive cause for the coolant leak, but initial hypotheses at the time of the event suggested it may have been the result of a micrometeor impact.

'Silent Barker,' the mysterious US military launch

The United States National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) launched a sizable classified satellite last year on a mission called "Silent Barker." 

The September launch took place aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, accompanied by the vehicle's largest payload fairing option. The launch took the satellite, designated NROL-107, to a geosynchronous orbit (GEO) above Earth, essentially parking the spacecraft in place in the sky.

Prior to launch, U.S. Space Force Lt. General Michael Guetlein, commander of Space Systems Command, said in a teleconference, "A huge element of deterrence is the ability for the adversary to know what we can and cannot see." 

"So we actually want our competitors to know that we have eyes in GEO and that we can see what's happening in GEO," Guetlein added. "Not only are we going to maintain custody and the ability to detect what's going on in GEO, but we'll have the indications and warnings to know there's something out of the normal occurring, and that goes a long way towards deterrence."

Virgin Galactic begins commercial spaceflights

After years of delays, Virgin Galactic began flying regular private missions to suborbital space in 2023.

The company's first mission, Galactic 01, took off June 29 and carried members of the Italian Air Force and Italy's National Research Council on a research flight that provided the trio a few minutes of weightlessness at their trajectory's apex. 

Before launching under its own power, Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity space plane is flown to altitude by the double-fuselaged carrier aircraft VMS Eve. At around 50,000 feet (15,000 meters) up, VSS Unity is released from Eve to burn its rocket motor and complete its climb to space.

Both carrier aircraft and space plane then return for landing on the same runway where the duo take off, at Spaceport America in New Mexico.

After Virgin Galactic's first commercial launch in June, the company kept pace with another mission every month for nearly the rest of 2023, flying a total of 15 private customers. Topping off the year with Galactic 05 in November, the company announced it would ground Unity in December, and resume flights again in January 2024. 

On Dec. 19, Virgin Galactic announced Galactic 06 would fly Jan. 26 of this year using VSS Unity, which is expected to be grounded sometime in 2024 and replaced with the company's next-generation "Delta class" vehicle.

SpaceX tops its own launch record, again

SpaceX has, once again, had its busiest year yet. In 2022, the company set a new record with 61 orbital launches. SpaceX blew through that total in 2023, with more than 90 orbital liftoffs — though the company likely won't hit the century mark, a milestone Elon Musk had floated earlier in the year.

The majority of SpaceX launches last year have used the company's mainstay Falcon 9 rocket, and have supported the growth of SpaceX's Starlink broadband megaconstellation. Thanks to its increased launch cadence, SpaceX was able to increase the number of its internet spacecraft on orbit by nearly 2,000 last year.

The mission, known as Galactic-06, is targeted for Jan. 26, Virgin Galactic announced in a statement issued on Tuesday (Dec. 19). The flight will include four private astronauts — one from Texas, one from California, one from Austria and one jointly from Ukraine and California, according to the statement. Names of the participants were not released.

Virgin Galactic, which is part of billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Group of companies, takes tourists and private astronauts to suborbital space using an air-launched system. That system consists of a carrier aircraft, VMS Eve, that deploys the VSS Unity space plane at an altitude of about 50,000 feet (15,000 meters). On Galactic-06, Unity will be helmed by commander C.J. Sturckow and pilot Nicola Pecile, and Eve will be flown by commander Michael Masucci and pilot Dan Alix.

Related: Virgin Galactic launches researchers to suborbital space on 5th commercial flight (video)

The company finished six spaceflights in as many months in 2023 following a two-year hiatus for hardware upgrades. Some of those flights catered to private tourists, while others also served governmental customers. For example, Walter Villadei of the Italian Air Force commanded Italy's Virtute-1 mission aboard a June 29 Virgin spaceflight, in part as training for his upcoming trip to the International Space Station on Axiom Space's Ax-3 mission, which is slated to lift off on Jan. 9.

Virgin Galactic is expected to ground its Unity space plane in 2024 after perhaps one or two more flights, company representatives have said. The company wants to focus on developing its next-generation "Delta class" space plane that could fly as often as twice a week once it's ready, CEO Michael Colglazier said in a November earnings call, as reported by SpaceNews.  

Test flights of Delta vehicles are expected to begin in 2025, with full operational service commencing in 2026. The Virgin fleet, incidentally, does not fly beyond the Kármán Line of 62 miles (100 kilometers), considered by international authorities to be the boundary of space. But U.S. entities use a different boundary, 50 miles (80 km), that Virgin breaches regularly.

Virgin Galactic's main competitor in the suborbital tourism industry, the Jeff Bezos-backed Blue Origin, had a 15-month gap in flights after a September 2022 failure on an uncrewed mission of its New Shepard spacecraft, which is rated for both payloads and people. Blue Origin returned to flight on Tuesday with an uncrewed New Shepard launch and plans to fly people again soon.

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report published on Dec. 7 looks at data from 2000 through mid-January 2023, which show that 50 out of 433 commercial space launches during this time resulted in "mishaps" — a term used to describe events such as catastrophic explosions and other failures. 

The FAA has been the lead investigative agency for 49 of the 50 mishaps, the report notes, with the exception being the fatal 2014 Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo crash. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigated that incident. 

Related: FAA wraps up safety review of SpaceX's huge Starship rocket 

Though the FAA oversees inquiries, the agency says it determines if the launch operator will conduct investigations itself on a case-by-case basis. However, the GAO found that, in practice, the FAA has authorized the operator to conduct investigations. 

A recent, high-profile mishap occurred in April, when the debut launch of SpaceX's giant Starship rocket ended in a spectacular explosion. SpaceX led that mishap investigation, with FAA oversight. The resulting report called for 63 corrective actions that SpaceX needed to take before being able to apply for a license for its second test flight. The FAA is also supervising the investigation into Starship's second test launch, a Nov. 18 liftoff that ended in a fiery demise and was also deemed a "mishap."

The new GAO report recommends that the Office of Commercial Space Transportation, under the FAA, comprehensively evaluate the effectiveness of its mishap investigation process.

A second recommendation calls for the FAA to define criteria for when an investigation should be led by the launch operator with FAA oversight or by the FAA itself. 

The report notes that FAA officials told the GAO that it relies on an operator-led approach because the agency does not have adequate resources for in-house investigation, given highly specialized vehicle designs among companies. In-house mishap investigations would be "an immense undertaking that would mean investigations would take 10 to 20 times longer, officials told us," the report stated.

The 2022 failure of Blue Origin's New Shepard research flight was also conducted with oversight from the FAA. The company led the investigation, which the FAA oversaw. The NTSB and NASA's Flight Opportunities Program and Commercial Crew Office also had observer status. New Shepard also carries crew for short suborbital flights.

The FAA agreed with Blue Origin's determination of the cause of the incident — a structural issue with a nozzle — and the agency closed the investigation this past September. However, Blue Origin needed to implement 21 corrective actions to "prevent mishap reoccurrence, including redesign of engine and nozzle components to improve structural performance during operation as well as organizational changes," before it could fly again, the September FAA report stated. The company is now preparing for an uncrewed flight scheduled for Dec. 18, some 15 months after the failure.

The GAO report states that the Department of Transportation, the FAA's parent agency, "concurred with our recommendations." The department committed to providing a detailed response to each GAO  recommendation within 180 days of the report's issuance.

The company, which was founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, hasn't flown since its New Shepard suborbital vehicle suffered an anomaly during an uncrewed research flight on Sept. 12, 2022. But that long drought is about to end.

"We're targeting a launch window that opens on Dec. 18 for our next New Shepard payload mission. #NS24 will carry 33 science and research payloads as well as 38,000 @clubforfuture postcards to space," Blue Origin announced today (Dec. 12) via X (formerly known as Twitter).

Related: Failure of Blue Origin's New Shepard a reminder that spaceflight is still hard

New Shepard is a reusable rocket-capsule combo that Blue Origin uses to take people and payloads to suborbital space. The vehicle has launched 23 times to date, six times with people on board.

The September 2022 flight, known as NS-23, was a research-only jaunt. It did not go well: About 65 seconds after launch, New Shepard's booster suffered a serious problem and came crashing back to Earth. The capsule managed to jet away from the problem and landed softly under parachutes, its 36 research payloads intact. 

Blue Origin soon undertook a mishap investigation, which was overseen by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). In March, the company announced that it had pinpointed the cause of the crash — a "thermo-structural failure" of the nozzle on the BE-3PM engine that powers New Shepard's booster. 

The FAA agreed with that conclusion and, in September, closed the mishap investigation. But Blue Origin couldn't return to flight quite yet; the FAA required the company to "implement 21 corrective actions to prevent mishap reoccurrence, including redesign of engine and nozzle components to improve structural performance during operation as well as organizational changes," agency officials wrote in a Sept. 27 press release.

"Blue Origin must implement all corrective actions that impact public safety and receive a license modification from the FAA that addresses all safety and other applicable regulatory requirements prior to the next New Shepard launch," the FAA added.

That work is apparently all done, for New Shepard is headed back to the pad at Blue Origin's West Texas launch site.

Blue Origin isn't the only company that launches paying customers to and from suborbital space; Virgin Galactic, which is part of British billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Group of companies, does so as well. In the 15 months that New Shepard has been grounded, Virgin Galactic has launched six crewed missions with its VSS Unity space plane. 

Unity flew for the sixth time in as many months last week, carrying two research scientists and another private passenger to and from suborbital space on a mission called Galactic 05. 

Unity will now get a bit of a break, staying out of the skies until January 2024, Virgin Galactic representatives have said. The spacecraft will then make an even bigger transition, flying just once or twice more before being grounded in mid-2024, according to SpaceNews, which cited an earnings call the company held on Wednesday (Nov. 8).

Related: Meet the crew of Virgin Galactic's 5th commercial spaceflight

The goal of the move is to free up resources for the "Delta class" space plane, the next-generation suborbital vehicle that Virgin Galactic is developing, company CEO Michael Colglazier said during Wednesday's call, according to SpaceNews.  

Each Delta craft will be capable of flying up to twice per week, Colglazier said. That's an eight-fold cadence boost over Unity, which is designed to fly about once per month at most. In addition, each Delta vehicle can carry six paying customers per flight compared to four for Unity.

As a result, every Delta space plane will be able to generate 12 times more revenue per month than Unity can, Colglazier said, according to SpaceNews. (Virgin Galactic is currently charging $450,000 for each seat on its suborbital missions.) So speeding the transition to the new line of vehicles makes financial sense.

"Unity's flight objectives are to demonstrate our system, showcase our astronaut experience and provide learnings for our Delta program," he said during the call. "The total costs to support Unity’s flights surpass the relatively modest monthly revenues."

Unity has been lifting off from Spaceport America in New Mexico, Virgin Galactic's commercial hub. After the vehicle's final flight next year, many company employees will be transferred from the site to a new factory in Phoenix, which will help build the Delta-class vehicles, SpaceNews reported.

Virgin Galactic aims to begin flight tests of the first Delta spacecraft in 2025 and to bring that vehicle into service in 2026, with others to follow over the ensuing months and years.

Unity's transition isn't the only move Virgin Galactic has made to spur Delta development. In a Tuesday (Nov. 7) filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the company announced that it will lay off about 185 people, which is roughly 18% of its workforce.

"The Company is taking this action to decrease its costs and strategically realign its resources," the filing states. "This reduction will result in approximately $25 million in annualized cost savings."

The Nov. 8 earnings call also announced Virgin Galactic's financial results for the third quarter of 2023, which ended on Sept. 30. During the quarter, the company earned $1.7 million in revenue, roughly double the amount from the third quarter in 2022. 

Virgin Galactic had a net loss of $105 million in third-quarter 2023, compared a net loss of $146 million during the same stretch a year earlier, according to a company statement.

SPACEPORT AMERICA, New Mexico — Virgin Galactic's reusable space plane VSS Unity lifted off again today (Nov. 2) , continuing the one-mission-per-month tempo the company began this spring. 

Today's flight, called Galactic 05, carried two research scientists and one other private passenger, along with VSS Unity's crew, to suborbital space. It marked the fifth commercial spaceflight for Virgin Galactic and the company's 10th trip to the final frontier overall. 

"The pursuit of scientific discovery has driven Virgin Galactic from the beginning, and we're thrilled to offer a wide breadth of high-quality and reliable access to space-based research," Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said in a preflight statement. "With six flights in six months, our teams have delivered on our turn time objectives for our initial spaceship, VSS Unity."

Related: Meet the crew of Virgin Galactic's 5th commercial spaceflight

Unity lifted off from Spaceport America here in southern New Mexico at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT; 9 a.m. local time) beneath the wings of its carrier plane, VMS Eve. When the pair reached an altitude of about 44,701 feet (13,625 meters), Eve released Unity, which then ignited its hybrid rocket motor. The space plane reached a top speed of Mach 2.96 — nearly three times the speed of sound — as it climbed through Earth's atmosphere, Virgin Galactic wrote in a postflight update.

Although it didn't reach orbit, the space plane did ascend high enough — 54.2 miles (87.2 kilometers) at peak altitude — for its passengers to see the curvature of Earth silhouetted against the dark background of space. Galactic 05's passengers experienced about two minutes of weightlessness before Unity returned to Earth with a runway landing at Spaceport America, which occurred around 11:59 a.m. EDT (1559 GMT; 9:59 a.m. local time in New Mexico).

Galactic 05 was the final flight for Virgin Galactic in 2023, as the company plans to engage in a standard inspection of its vehicles prior to the next scheduled flight in January 2024.

Today's mission carried a total of six people into space, three crew and three passengers. Mike "Sooch" Masucci served as mission commander in Unity's cockpit, while Kelly Latimer piloted the space plane. Virgin Galactic astronaut instructor Colin Bennett made the final flight for the company's in-flight astronaut trainers; subsequent flights will carry four passengers rather than three.

Masucci is a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and a former test and combat pilot who has logged more than 10,000 flying hours in more than 80 different types of airplanes. He made his first trip into space aboard Unity in February 2019 and flew again in May 2023.

Latimer was the first woman to serve as a research pilot at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in California. She has logged several thousand hours in the cockpits of dozens of different aircraft, including piloting Galactic 04 last month.

Bennett served with the U.K.'s Ministry of Defense prior to moving to Virgin Atlantic and then Virgin Galactic. A qualified pilot, he has accumulated flight hours across aircraft including commercial airliners, Chinook helicopters and VMS Eve. Bennett was Virgin Galactic's Astronaut 003 and flew with company founder Richard Branson on VSS Unity's final test flight in July 2021.

Unity carried three passengers into space on Galactic 05, two of them scientists who conducted human-tended research during the flight.

Alan Stern, Virgin Galactic Astronaut 020: Stern is best known for his role as the principal investigator of NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto and the outer solar system. Stern, a researcher at the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, has been part of an array of orbital and suborbital missions, including research launched in high-performance aircraft and aboard the space shuttle. For Stern, Galactic 05 was a precursor to a future suborbital flight as part of NASA's Flight Opportunities program. During Galactic 05, Stern wore a biomedical harness to collect physiological data about the body's response to spaceflight, while performing several activities designed to smooth the way for future research missions.

Kelli Gerardi, Virgin Galactic Astronaut 021: Gerardi is a bioastronautics researcher and payload specialist for the Institute for Astronomical Sciences, where she specializes in microgravity research. She flew with three payloads aboard Galactic 05, including two that evaluated healthcare technology in microgravity conditions.

Ketty Maisonrouge, Virgin Galactic Astronaut 022: A Franco-Italian private astronaut who had long dreamed of flying to space. You can learn more about Maisonrouge, a longtime Virgin Galactic ticketholder, here.

Related: Virgin Galactic launches 3 of its original space tourist customers to the final frontier (video)

Also participating in Galactic 05 were the two pilots of VMS Eve, who sat in the carrier craft's right fuselage, allowing an unobstructed view of Unity prior to and during release. They were:

Commander Jameel Janjua: Janjua is a retired Canadian Air Force Major with an extensive background as a test pilot. He earned a masters of science in aeronautics and astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and flew as VMS Eve's pilot during Galactic 01, as well as during last month's Galactic 04 flight.

Pilot Andy Edgell: An experimental test pilot since 1999, Edgell has served in the British Royal Air Force flying F-35s and Harriers. Edgell joined Virgin Galactic this year, and Galactic 05 marked his first time in the cockpit during one of the company's commercial flights.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 1:15 p.m. EDT on Nov. 2 with flight statistics from Virgin Galactic.

Virgin Galactic is set to take off on its fifth commercial spaceflight since it began the service last summer. 

Galactic 05 is scheduled to lift off from Spaceport America in New Mexico on Thursday (Nov. 2) at around 9 a.m. MDT (10 a.m. EDT; 1400 GMT).

The mission will carry three passengers as well as Virgin Galactic crew aboard the VSS Unity space plane on a suborbital mission, on which cabin occupants will experience several minutes of weightlessness at the edge of space.

Whether or not the passenger names for each flight are made public is a decision made between those ticket-holders and Virgin Galactic, and not every passenger over the last few months has opted to have their name published before their flight. For Galactic 05, two of the three passengers' names were released earlier in October, and the pair happen to already be well known in the space industry.

Related: Meet the crew of Virgin Galactic's 5th commercial spaceflight

Alan Stern is a planetary scientist and vice president of the Space Science Division at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado. He has been involved in several NASA research missions throughout his career and currently serves as principal investigator of the New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. 

That one famous picture of Pluto you've seen, which stars the dwarf planet's famous heart-shaped feature? Alan Stern is a major reason that photo exists. 

Flying alongside Stern inside VSS Unity’s crew cabin will be Kellie Gerardi. Everything in Gerardi’s life has led her to this first flight to space — and she hopes it will be the first of many. 

Gerardi has worked as a researcher in the aeronautics industry throughout the span of her career. She is a missions operations lead at Palantir Technologies, a payload specialist at the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences (IIAS) and a social media STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) influencer with a following of nearly 700,000. Through her online presence, she has created a great deal of educational content that has been viewed by millions, and she has authored three books about space.

Stern and Gerardi’s missions were each sponsored by their respective organizations, both of which are focused on research. Their primary objectives during Galactic 05 will be to complete a series of experiments that each will be conducting inside the short window of weightlessness during the apogee of their flight.

The third private passenger was not named in Virgin Galactic’s release, but was specified as someone of Franco-Italian nationality. A Virgin Galactic astronaut instructor, Colin Bennett, will fly inside VSS Unity’s cabin with the trio, with mission commander Mike Masucci and pilot Kelly Latimer at the controls in the cockpit. 

Photos: The first space tourists

Unity’s flight to space begins on the runway at Spaceport America. The space plane stows between the dual cockpits of its carrier aircraft, VMS Eve, commanded and piloted for Galactic 05 by Jameel Janjua and Andy Edgell, respectively. At around 50,000 feet (15,000 meters) in altitude, VSS Unity is released from Eve to burn its rocket motor and complete its climb to space.

Following their short stint on the top of the world, VSS Unity and its crew will return for a landing back at the runway at Spaceport America, followed shortly after by VMS Eve. 

Virgin Galactic has not livestreamed its missions since Galactic 02, and now only posts mission updates through the company’s X account, formerly known as Twitter. Thursday’s flight is expected to begin at approximately 9 a.m. MDT (10 a.m. ET/1400 GMT). From liftoff to landing, Galactic 05 will likely last around 1.5 hours.

She works as mission operations lead for Palantir Technologies and as a payload specialist and bioastronautics researcher for the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences (IIAS). She's also an author, a mom, a social media STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) influencer with a resume of qualifications too long to list and followers who number well over half a million — and now she's headed to space.

Gerardi is a crewmember on Virgin Galactic's fifth commercial spaceflight, Galactic 05. She'll ride aboard the company's VSS Unity space plane as it takes her and other passengers to suborbital space and back on Thursday (Nov. 2).

For Gerardi, Galactic 05 — her first flight to space — represents the culmination of years of hard work and curiosity in the pursuit of astronautical research and the hopes of expanding humanity's reach into the stars. The mission also stands as a new beginning for her and the hundreds of thousands of people who follow her and other STEM communicators online, as access to space grows increasingly tangible for people across the world. 

Related: Meet the crew of Virgin Galactic's 5th commercial spaceflight launching on Nov. 2

Girardi has flown scientific missions aboard parabolic jet flights, donned spacesuits in the name of research, experienced altitude and high-g force training, and will now add "astronaut" to her list of accomplishments. She sat down with Space.com before the flight to discuss what it all means for her, and the bigger picture of humanity's access to space.

Of the three passengers flying on Galactic 05, Virgin Galactic has so far only announced the names of two: Gerardi and Stern, best known for his role as principal investigator on NASA's New Horizons mission to fly by Pluto and into the Kuiper Belt. Stern's background with NASA is extensive, and his role aboard Galactic 05 will, in part, be in preparation for another flight he will fly for a NASA-funded project.

Gerardi's announcement that she would be flying on Galactic 05 was teased online in the weeks preceding the official press release from Virgin Galactic, and was celebrated in several posts across various social media platforms. And, since her flight was made public, Gerardi has brought her audience along for the journey.

Galactic 05 passengers arrived at Spaceport America, in New Mexico, earlier in the week before their flight to complete their training. 

Related: New Horizons' Alan Stern will fulfill a lifelong dream on Virgin Galactic spaceflight this week

Galactic 05 will be Virgin's final mission of 2023, with the company expecting to resume its monthly cadence of suborbital flights in January 2024. The pause, according to Virgin Galactic, will be for routine maintenance and inspections on its VSS Unity space plane and VMS Eve carrier aircraft. 

Virgin Galactic does not livestream its commercial missions, but advises monitoring the company's social media channel for updates. The flight is scheduled to take off from the runway at Spaceport America around 9 a.m. MDT (10 a.m. ET/1400 GMT), and it will likely last about 1.5 hours.

That won't dilute the joy of fulfilling his childhood dream, however. Growing up in the Apollo era, Stern watched flights to the moon launch with some regularity. Like many of his generation, he expected crewed spaceflight to become routine, expecting many more trips to the moon and, in relatively short order, voyages to Mars as well. Instead, he watched as only a handful of people climbed out of Earth's atmosphere.

Stern, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado and principal investigator of NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto and the outer solar system, will soon join their ranks. On Thursday (Nov. 2), he will take a brief trip to suborbital space on Virgin Galactic's Galactic 05 mission.

"I've done a lot of things over the last 30 years that have led me to be prepared," Stern told Space.com. To be so close to heading into space is "really gratifying [and] a little surreal," he said.

Related: Destination Pluto: NASA's New Horizons mission in pictures

Preparation

Preparing for spaceflight isn't like packing for a family vacation. As part of his training for Galactic 05, Stern has completed three centrifuge sessions and three high-performance jet flights. 

The jet flights weren't like his previous research trips, during which he performed airborne astronomy on board F-18 Hornets and other combat aircraft. Instead, the flights reached high levels of acceleration, or Gs, to help prepare the body for the rapid speeds achieved at launch.

"I can tell you, at the end of those flights, it's just like that scene in the original 'Top Gun' movie in the locker room," Stern said. "You're raining sweat."

But he doesn't expect his actual flight to be quite so physically demanding. "Just like athletes, you train harder than the event," Stern said.

A lifetime accomplishment

Stern's fast-moving training isn't the only way he has prepared for spaceflight. He has been working toward that goal throughout his career.

"As a young engineer, and then as a young scientist, I did everything I could think of to make myself a top candidate to be a NASA engineer," he wrote on Oct. 23, in a piece for The Space Review.

That included scuba diving, traveling to the South Pole, becoming a commercial pilot and even working as a state-certified Emergency Medical Technician. He applied six times to become a NASA space shuttle mission specialist and was at one point approved to fly as a shuttle payload specialist, though he was later replaced by another researcher.

Over the last decade, Stern has been encouraging scientists to travel into space via commercial space flight. Since 2010, Stern has helped to organize the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference, which brings together hundreds of suborbital researchers, educators, flight providers, spaceport operators and others.

Stern has also campaigned tirelessly for the research and education marketplace in suborbital flight.

"When Virgin and Blue Origin started their business, they had only one interest, and it was flying tourists," Stern said. "I started talking to them about flying researchers and educators. They both do that now."

"All the suborbital flight providers in this commercial era are doing research in addition to tourist flights," he said.

For Stern's short flight, he has eight objectives laid out by SwRI. Most of those will help set the stage for his next suborbital flight, which will be funded by NASA. That upcoming flight will be purely research, Stern said.

While in the air, he will be working to familiarize himself with how the actual experience differs from training simulations, a process that will make future research flights flow more smoothly. He'll be wearing a bioharness modeled after a design flown on more than two dozen space shuttle missions, according to his flight team member Dan Durda, also of SwRI. The harness will measure his blood pressure and heart rate and compare those figures to data from his centrifuge runs and zero-g flights, as well as to the Virgin-Galactic-provided biomedical band.

As preparation for his upcoming NASA flight, Stern will also carry a functional mockup of the camera that he will carry on his second trip into space.

But all of the objectives aren't strictly business. One thing Stern will be doing is to "mitigate the overview effect distractions" — a fancy way of saying, getting a look out the window now so it won't distract him on the next flight.

"When we're there to get a very specific job done…we pretty much can't 'afford' the 'distractions' of the rest of this amazing experience," Durda told Space.com by email. "So, getting that all 'out of the way,' so to speak, is an important risk-reduction aspect of a first flight like this."

Related: Virgin Galactic launches 3 of its original space tourist customers to the final frontier (video)

'A damn good time'

Does Stern have any concerns about his upcoming trip?

"You mean, other than I could be killed?" he said.

He acknowledged that the risk is higher than it would be on a commercial airline flight. At the same time, with more than 24 zero-g flights under his belt, Stern has experience with potentially dangerous situations.

His bigger fear is smaller than that. In the week before his flight, Stern flew to Boston for a meeting with more than 100 people to discuss the New Horizons mission. "I don't want to get something from somebody and be sick next week," he said.

That fear is well founded. During Apollo 13, NASA astronaut Thomas Kenneth Mattingly was kept from launching into space due to exposure to German measles, which he never contracted. (Mattingly later flew on Apollo 16.) 

While exposure wouldn't be enough to keep Stern from going to space, being sick likely would affect his flight capability. "I'm masking a fair amount," Stern said.

After several decades of trying to get into space, what is Stern most excited about?

"Accomplishing the objectives and having a damn good time," he said.

Galactic 05 is scheduled to lift off this Thursday (Nov. 2) and will carry three passengers on a brief trip to suborbital space. The trio will fly aboard Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo space plane, named VSS Unity, and experience several minutes of weightlessness while they perform a quick round of research experiments and gaze at the wonders of Earth from a vantage point few have reached.

The Virgin Galactic crew accompanying them include one of the group's astronaut instructors, responsible for preparing the three for their flight, as well as two pilots in the VSS Unity cockpit.

Related: What is Virgin Galactic, and what do they do?

The mission will take off from Spaceport America in New Mexico, a state-owned launch facility that hosts Virgin Galactic as its main tenant. VSS Unity and its crew will be brought to altitude by SpaceShipTwo's carrier aircraft, the double-cockpit-designed VMS Eve.

VMS Eve carries VSS Unity into the air, with the vehicle hanging from the plane's mid-wing. Once the pair reaches about 50,000 feet (15,000 meters), Eve releases Unity , which drops and fires its single rocket motor to continue on a suborbital trajectory.

As Virgin Galactic begins to regularly check names off its list of early seat reservation-holders, the company also seems to be allowing those customers the option of anonymity. In the weeks leading up to flights over the past few months, Virgin Galactic has released passenger information at an inconsistent rate. For this flight, the company has released two of the three names for Galactic 05, listing the third passenger only as "Astronaut 022 — Private Astronaut — Franco-Italian nationality."

The names of astronauts 020 and 021, however, are far from a mystery, and have already earned recognition in the spaceflight industry.

Alan Stern 020

Alan Stern is a planetary scientist most known for his role as principal investigator of NASA's New Horizons mission, which flew by Pluto in 2015 and is currently exploring the Kuiper Belt, the ring of icy bodies beyond Neptune. 

Stern's work with NASA spans dozens of missions over more than two decades, and he currently serves as associate vice president of the Space Science Division at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI). His Virgin Galactic seat is sponsored by SwRI and is part of NASA's Flight Opportunities program, which aims to advance spaceflight technologies through suborbital research aboard commercial missions. 

This will be Stern's first time flying to space, but it won't be the first far-off place his research has taken him. In addition to being an accomplished aircraft pilot, Stern has traveled to the depths of the North Atlantic Ocean, where he explored the wreck of the Titanic; he has journeyed to the South Pole; and he has flown numerous high altitude and parabolic flights, all in the pursuit of science.

His ride aboard VSS Unity will serve a similar goal. For Stern, Galactic 05 is, in part, a training mission for NASA-funded research he will perform on a future suborbital mission. Stern will be wearing a biomedical harness to monitor his vital signs throughout his flight, and he will participate in a series of risk-reduction operations and astronomical observations to evaluate the suborbital spacecraft environment to optimize those activities. 

Related: What's the difference between orbital and suborbital spaceflight?

Kellie Gerardi 021

Kellie Gerardi is a missions operations lead at Palantir Technologies, a payload specialist at the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences (IIAS) and an accomplished author and space/STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) communicator with a following in the hundreds of thousands. 

Gerardi's research aboard Galactic 05 will continue investigations she has performed during parabolic flights on Earth, which create the experience of weightlessness for passengers for about 30 seconds at a time. Gerardi's flight is sponsored by the IIAS, and, like Stern's, the experiments she will perform are largely focused on collecting biometric data. 

Attached directly to her skin, Gerardi will be wearing the first continuous glucose monitor to fly into space, which will passively monitor her blood glucose throughout the mission. Gerardi will also be wearing a biomonitoring device, called Astroskin, which will continuously track her vitals from takeoff to landing. The device has been worn before by astronauts aboard the International Space Station; however, Galactic 05 will mark its first use during launch and reentry procedures.

A third experiment Gerardi will perform involves fluidic behaviors in microgravity environments, which has wide implications for spaceflight technologies, from spacecraft plumbing to pharmaceutical production and medical treatment procedures. 

Colin Bennet 003

Colin Bennett is Galactic 05's astronaut instructor and has been responsible for preparing the crew for the flight ahead. He is Virgin Galactic's Astronaut 003, and flew with Virgin founder Richard Branson on VSS Unity's final test flight in July 2021. In one of his many roles at Virgin Galactic over the last 15 years, Bennett also served as astronaut instructor for Galactic 01, another research flight.

VSS Unity pilots

Inside VSS Unity's cockpit will be Commander Mike "Sooch" Masucci and Pilot Kelly Latimer. Both Masucci and Latimer possess long flight resumes. 

Masucci served as a lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force before joining Virgin Galactic. He sat at the helm of VSS Unity during the Galactic 01 mission and was one two VMS Eve pilots on Galactic 02.

Latimer worked at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center for many years and logged thousands of hours as a research pilot. After joining Virgin, Latimer piloted the Cosmic Girl carrier plane during Virgin Orbit's first successful satellite launch in 2021. (Virgin Orbit, a sister company of Virgin Galactic, filed for bankruptcy in April of this year.)

VMS Eve pilots

Manning the dual cockpits of the VMS Eve carrier aircraft for Galactic 05 will be Commander Jameel Janjua and Pilot Andy Edgell.

Janjua got his start at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he earned a masters degree in aeronautics and astronautics. From there, he joined the Canadian Air Force and worked his way up to the rank of major while gaining extensive experience as a test pilot before his retirement from service. Now, Janjua is gaining extensive experience as a pilot for VMS Eve. Including Galactic 05, Janjua has piloted Eve for four of Virgin's five commercial missions.

Andy Edgell has been an experimental test pilot since 1999, and served in the British Royal Air Force flying F-35s and Harriers, according to Virgin Galactic's website. Edgell joined Virgin Galactic this year, and this will be his first time in the cockpit during one of the company's commercial flights.

Janjua and Edgell will pilot VMS Eve for a landing on the runway back at Spaceport America following the plane's release and return of VSS Unity. This mission itself will not be livestreamed, as has become the norm for Virgin Galactic's commercial flights, but updates are expected via the company's social media channels.

According to a recent Virgin Galactic mission update, Galactic 05 will be the company's last launch until 2024. This one-month pause will "allow time for routine, planned annual vehicle inspections before re-commencing with standard pre-flight readiness procedures," the update reads. 

Galactic 06 is currently scheduled for January 2024, and is expected to carry four private passengers.

The company announced on Wednesday (Oct. 18) that Galactic 06, its fifth commercial spaceflight, has a flight window that opens on Nov. 2, 2023. The flight will be Virgin Galactic's sixth spaceflight in as many months and will see its reusable space plane VSS Unity reach an altitude of about 54 miles (87 kilometers) above Earth, enough for its passengers to experience weightlessness and see the blackness of space.

Those passengers will include an unnamed private astronaut of Franco-Italian nationality; planetary scientist Alan Stern, the principal investigator of NASA's New Horizons Pluto mission, and Kellie Gerardi, a science communicator and bioastronautics researcher for the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences (IIAS). Both will be conducting research during the flight related to the effects of spaceflight on the human body, while Stern will also "conduct practice activities for an astronomical experiment" set for an upcoming NASA flight, according to a Virgin Galactic statement.

Related: Virgin Galactic launches 1st Pakistani to space on 4th commercial spaceflight (video)

Stern, who has overseen one of NASA's most ambitious spaceflight missions for years now, said he's looking forward to finally making the trip into space himself. 

"After years of sending machines to conduct research on my behalf, I'm thrilled to be making this maiden spaceflight," Stern said in the Virgin Galactic statement. "What sets this flight apart from others, and which likely represents a new kind of space activity, is that more than anything else I will be training — in space — for future space experiments I will be performing with NASA funding."

Meanwhile, Gerardi said the mission represents not only a lifelong dream but the beginning of a new era in which space is within reach for researchers. "I'm grateful for the support and confidence that IIAS continues to place in me, and I'm looking forward to paving the way for our many talented researchers who will follow, using space as a laboratory to benefit humanity," Gerardi said, on behalf of IIAS.

Virgin Galactic's space tourism flights use a "mothership" aircraft, VMS Eve, to carry its space plane VSS Unity to an altitude of around 50,000 feet (15,240 meters) before releasing it. Unity's rocket engine then ignites, carrying the space plane toward suborbital space at nearly three times the speed of sound.

Its most recent flight, Galactic 04, launched the first Pakistani to space on Oct. 6. Less than two months prior, Galactic 02 saw the first mother-daughter duo and the youngest person ever get lofted to the final frontier.

Houston-based Axiom Space's Ax-3 flight remains on track for a launch toward the International Space Station (ISS) no sooner than January 2024. The four crewmembers, including a former NASA astronaut, a European Space Agency reserve astronaut and a passenger who flew to suborbital space with Virgin Galactic earlier this year, spoke with journalists on Monday (Oct. 16) about their excitement.

"I'm very happy to be a part of this mission and this great crew," Swedish astronaut Marcus Wandt said during the livestreamed press conference, emphasizing that Ax-3 will include representation from government and industry alike in his country. "I'm also proud of being trusted by Sweden and Europe to represent Sweden [in] space and throughout this mission, which to me is so much more than the 14-plus days in space, and my background as a fighter pilot and test pilot as well."

Ax-3 will launch to the ISS from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, using SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket. (Axiom signed an agreement with SpaceX in 2021 to launch three additional crews to space after the pioneering mission Ax-1, which flew in April 2022; additionally, SpaceX is the only fully certified commercial spacecraft for NASA missions so far.)

Related: Axiom Space names Ax-3 astronaut crew for SpaceX mission to ISS

The mission will be led by former NASA astronaut Michael López-Alegría, a dual U.S.-Spanish citizen who also commanded Ax-1. He will be joined by Wandt, who was called up from his reserve astronaut status when assigned to Ax-3; Italian Air Force Col. Walter Villadei, who flew to suborbital space on Virgin Galactic's first commercial launch this past June; and Turkey's first citizen in space, Alper Gezeravcı. It will be López-Alegría's sixth space mission, Villadei's second and the first for Wandt and Gezeravcı.

López-Alegría said the training is going smoothly and that the crew has learned a lot since Ax-1, when other ISS astronauts had to step in to help the crew with their tasks. He said Ax-1 was a startup mission accomplished on an "aggressive timeline" and that Axiom Space has matured its processes since that time.

For the next mission, Ax-2 in May 2023, commander and former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson was tasked with fewer responsibilities to give her time to help the crew; in the meantime, NASA stipulated that all commercial missions must have a former agency astronaut at the helm. 

"She was more available to help the rest of the [Ax-2] crew with their experiments, and Ax-3 will follow suit," López-Alegría said. Other changes have been made with training, and with scheduling tools to help the crew manage their time in orbit. As for future missions, he added, the schedule with Axiom Space is comfortable enough for him and Whitson to trade off commands for the foreseeable future, without the need to hire other former agency astronauts yet.

Gezeravcı was selected as an astronaut candidate in May from a reported pool of 36,000 applicants in Turkey. As he readies for the first Turkish spaceflight, Gezeravcı said he hopes the effort "is going to put a remarkable footprint on our prideful centennial" and will also help Turkey "solidify the unity" following a devastating earthquake earlier in the year.

Villadei reached suborbital space (under the U.S. definition, not that of the International Astronomical Federation) during an Italian Air Force flight in June with Virgin Galactic. "From the training standpoint, I have to say that it was very useful to me as a kind of initial test flight," he said. Villadei emphasized that he is also bringing in years of experience training in Russia and with NASA under previous Air Force initiatives. 

"For people that want to fly to the ISS, it [Virgin Galactic] is not strictly needed, or necessary," he added. "The training is different. The experience is similar. In just an hour and a half you are going through all the stages of a flight – from the launch, microgravity and then the reentry. But it's definitely a nice platform to test and to strengthen all these training capabilities."

Virgin Galactic continues to make spaceflight history.

The company successfully sent a Pakistani to space for the first time on its "Galactic 04" mission, which lifted off from New Mexico's Spaceport America this morning (Oct. 6). That passenger was adventurer Namira Salim, founder and chairperson of the nonprofit Space Trust.

Today's milestone comes less than two months after Virgin Galactic launched the first former Olympian and the first mother-daughter duo to the final frontier on its Galactic 02 flight. The daughter in that duo, 18-year-old Anastatia Mayers, also became the youngest-ever spaceflyer during that mission.

Related: Meet the crew of Virgin Galactic's 'Galactic 04' mission 

Galactic 04 began at 11:28 a.m. EDT (1528 GMT) this morning, when Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity space plane lifted off beneath the wings of its carrier craft, known as VMS Eve.

Eve carried Unity high into the New Mexico skies, ultimately releasing the space plane at 12:10 p.m. EDT (1610 GMT) at an altitude of 44,341 feet (13,515 meters), according to Virgin Galactic. Unity then fired up its onboard rocket motor, powering its way to suborbital space and attaining a top speed of Mach 2.95 — nearly three times the speed of sound — along the way.

Salim and her fellow space tourist customers — British advertising executive Trevor Beattie and American astronomy educator Ron Rosano — got to experience a few minutes of weightlessness and see Earth against the darkness of space. They reached a maximum altitude of 54.3 miles (87.4 kilometers).

Their flight ended at around 12:25 p.m. EDT (1625 GMT), when Unity finally touched down at Spaceport America, Virgin Galactic said in an emailed statement.

Joining Salim, Beattie and Rosano in Unity's cabin was Beth Moses, Virgin Galactic's chief astronaut instructor. Kelly Latimer and C.J. Sturckow piloted the space plane, and Nicola Pecile and Jameel Janjua were at the controls of VMS Eve during the mission. (The carrier plane also landed back at Spaceport America.)

As the mission name indicates, Galactic 04 was Virgin's fourth commercial spaceflight. Rosano, Beattie and Salim were the company's 17th, 18th and 19th astronauts, respectively, Virgin Galactic said.

Galactic 04 adds to Salim's adventurer credentials, which were already considerable. For example, she's the first Pakistani to travel to both the North and South Poles.

Salim is one of Virgin Galactic's "Founder Astronauts," having bought her ticket way back in 2006. She paid $200,000 back then; the price has since risen to $450,000.

Virgin Galactic has one main competitor in the suborbital space tourism business: Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' aerospace company. However, Blue Origin's New Shepard vehicle hasn't flown since suffering a failure during an uncrewed research flight in September 2022.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 3:05 p.m. ET on Oct. 6 with flight statistics from Virgin Galactic.

Virgin Galactic is keeping pace with the company's monthly flight cadence, and is targeting Oct. 6 for the launch of their fourth commercial mission, Galactic 04.

Three space tourists are scheduled to launch on a suborbital trajectory aboard Virgin Galactic's reusable space plane, VSS Unity. Virgin Galactic has not announced a time for Friday's flight, but similar missions that have flown over the last few months have taken place in the morning, with the takeoff of Unity's carrier aircraft, VMS Eve, around 11 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT).

VMS Eve will take off from Virgin Galactic's Spaceport America in New Mexico and will carry Unity and her crew to altitude before releasing the space plane to rocket itself the rest of the way to space.

The VSS Unity spacecraft flies on a suborbital trajectory that allows its passengers several minutes of weightlessness before returning to the runway back at Spaceport America. Though it doesn't reach orbit, Unity will be high enough that passengers will be able to see the curvature of Earth against the dark backdrop of outer space.

Related: Meet the crew of Virgin Galactic's 4th commercial spaceflight

What time is the Galactic-04 suborbital launch?

A Virgin Galactic representative confirmed to Space.com via email that liftoff of VMS Eve will take place at 9:40 a.m. MT (11:40 a.m. or 1540 GMT), with Unity's launch approximately 30 minutes later.

With Unity secured between the double cockpits of her carrier aircraft, Eve will carry the space plane to an altitude of about 50,000 feet (15,000 meters). Once at altitude, Unity will be released and will ignite its rocket engine to climb the rest of the way to the edge of space.

Originally, Virgin had targeted Oct. 5 for the Galactic 04 flight. However, on Oct. 1, the company wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that the launch window was moved back to give their "team an additional day to complete vehicle prep and checks," the post read.

Can I watch Virgin Galactic's Galactic 04 spaceflight?

Nope. Virgin Galactic didn't provide streaming coverage for Galactic 03, and won't be providing live video for Galactic 04 either. During their last mission, updates were only provided via X, and that seems to be the case for Galactic 04 as well. 

"There will not be a livestream, but everyone can follow Virgin Galactic on X/Twitter for the latest updates ahead of flight and on the day of flight," the representative added.

Further mission updates on Virgin Galactic's X account are expected as launch day approaches, and throughout the morning during the Oct. 6 flight.

Who is riding on the Galactic 04 spaceflight?

In total, six people will fly to space on Galactic 04: Mission commander Kelly Latimer and pilot C.J. Sturckow will be at the helm of VSS Unity. In the cabin, three private passengers will ride alongside Virgin Galactic's chief astronaut instructor.

Photos: The first space tourists

• Latimer was the first woman to serve as a research pilot at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center. She has logged several thousand hours in the cockpit of dozens of different aircraft, and was at the helm of VMS Eve during Virgin Galactic's first commercial spaceflight mission in June.
• Sturckow was a NASA astronaut from 1995 to 2013, during which time he flew four space shuttle missions, including the first shuttle to launch to the International Space Station (ISS). Galactic 04 will mark Sturckow's eleventh spaceflight.

The private astronauts boarding VSS Unity for Galactic 04 are some of the company's "Founder Astronauts," reserving their seats more than 15 years ago. Designated Virgin Galactic's astronauts 017, 018 and 019, the Galactic 04 crew hail from the United States, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates.

• Ron Rosano, Virgin Galactic Astronaut 017: Rosano is a space fanatic from Muir Beach, California. He is an astronomy educator who runs multiple websites dedicated to his space ventures and tracking crewed spaceflight, in general. In addition to his ticket for Galactic 04, Rosano has also reserved seats aboard  Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket, and Space Perspective's stratospheric balloon, according to his website.
• Trevor Beattie, Virgin Galactic Astronaut 018: Beattie is a long-time British ad executive who's made a name for himself in the media industry, and began marketing Virgin Galactic flights through his company, Beattie McGuinness Bungay, as early as 2006.
• Namira Salim, Virgin Galactic Astronaut 019: Salim founded the nonprofit Space Trust, which advocates for leveraging the growing space sector as a platform for achieving peace on Earth. She is Pakistani, living in Dubai, and is recognized as Pakistan's first astronaut. A true world-adventurer, Salim is also the first Pakistani to venture to the North and South Poles.

Two pilots will sit parallel, one in each of the double fuselages of VMS Eve, during Friday's Galactic 04 flight. The pair will coordinate the release of VSS Unity, before flying the carrier aircraft back to Spaceport America's runway at the end of the mission. 

• Jameel Janjua: Janjua is a retired Canadian Air Force Major with an extensive background as a test pilot. He earned a masters of science in aeronautics and astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and flew as VMS Eve's pilot during Galactic 01.
• Nicola Pecile: Pecile has flown on 170 different aircraft since beginning his flying career in 1991, which included service in the Italian Air Force as a lieutenant colonel. He has a total of 7,700 flight hours, according to Virgin Galactic.

How long will Virgin Galactic's spaceflight last?

The exact mission length is uncertain. On Virgin Galactic's past commercial flights, like June's Galactic 01, about 1.5 hours passed between VMS Eve takeoff and the VSS Unity landing back at Spaceport America. 

Galactic 04 will carry a three-person crew accompanied by the company's head astronaut instructor, as well as the two pilots at the helm of Virgin's SpaceShipTwo vehicle, VSS Unity. Their flight to the edge space is scheduled to take place on Friday, (Oct. 6).

The mission will take off from Spaceport America in New Mexico. VSS Unity and its crew will be brought to altitude by the spaceplane's double-cockpit carrier aircraft, VMS Eve, which will release VSS Unity at around 50,000 feet (15,000 meters). After release, a firing of VSS Unity's rocket motor will put it on a suborbital trajectory, bringing the space plane and crew to the edge of space for a few minutes of weightlessness and a great view of their home planet. 

Galactic 04 is Virgin's fourth commercial mission in as many months, which keeps the company on track with its projected once-a-month flight cadence for VSS Unity. In contrast with the Virgin Galactic's first two commercial flights, the company did not release the names of the passengers for Galactic 03 and Galactic 04. However, the three passengers for Friday's upcoming mission were less guarded, and each excitedly announced his or her upcoming adventure on social media.

Related: What is Virgin Galactic, and what do they do?

Namira Salim 019

Namira Salim will be Virgin Galactic's Astronaut 019. She is a world traveler, entrepreneur and artist with a diverse background in space engagement. Salim is one of Virgin Galactic's "Founder Astronauts," and was recognized by Virgin Group founder Richard Branson for her early contributions to the company's mission, according to Salim's website. 

"Thrilled to take to the #stars with @trevorbmbagency and @ronrosano aboard #Galactic04 with @virgingalactic. Inspiring #girls #women and #youth globally to reach for the stars," Salim posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Sept. 17.

During Virgin Galactic's infancy, Salim was initially slated to fly to space in 2008. During her long wait since then, Salim founded the nonprofit Space Trust, which advocates for leveraging the growing space sector as a platform for achieving peace on Earth. 

Salim is Pakistani and lives in Dubai. When she was announced as one of Virgin Galactic's earliest customers, she was recognized as Pakistan's first astronaut, and will be that country's first citizen in space following her upcoming flight. She was also the first Pakistani to venture to the North and South Poles.

Related: Virgin Galactic launches 3 of its original space tourist customers to the final frontier (video)

Trevor Beattie 018

"I WILL FLY TO SPACE. I've waited all my life to write those words," Trevor Beattie wrote on X on Sept. 24. Beattie, a British marketing executive, has indeed been waiting quite a long time. Like Salim, Beattie bought his ticket more than 15 years ago.

Since the announcement, Beattie has used social media to voice his excitement for his upcoming mission, including the revelation of several keepsakes he will be bringing with him on Galactic 04. These items include:

• $2.23 check signed by Orville Wright, which has been folded into a paper airplane
• Signed photo of Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space
• An old school project booklet created by Beattie, titled "The Space Race"
• LUNAR Industries patch from the 2009 movie "Moon"

Ron Rosano 017

If there's any doubt in your mind about just how much this man loves space, dispel it. Ron Rosano is an American astronomy educator with seats purchased not only on Galactic 04, but on Blue Origin's New Shepard, and Space Perspective's stratospheric balloon, according to his website.

He has followed the space program since the Apollo moon missions and keeps his own Suborbital Flight Journal, which tracks crewed flights back to 1961. Rosano is one of NASA's Solar System Ambassadors and serves on the boards and advisory councils for numerous astronomy and space organizations. Like his crewmates, he also took to X to announce his upcoming flight.

"Words can't describe the extraordinary joy of being selected by @VirginGalactic for #Galactic04," his Sept. 18 post reads, in part.

Rosano writes on his website that his purpose is to give "students and humans across the globe a perspective of Earth as a planet as it exists in the incredibly incomprehensible vast emptiness of space, encouraging the understanding of the uniqueness of our globe as a candle of light in an immense universe; inspiring others to see themselves as crew on this planet Earth, and helping others realize the need the protect and preserve this globe, as it exists under a tenuous and extremely thin atmosphere, which keeps everything alive within it."

Virgin Galactic Chief Astronaut Instructor Beth Moses

Beth Moses is Virgin Galactic's Astronaut 002 and is earning her wings again and again as the company's chief astronaut instructor. She was the first woman to fly aboard a commercial space vehicle, according to Virgin Galactic, and has trained all the crews that have flown since the start of regular operations last summer. 

Moses was responsible for training the crew of Galactic 04, and she will accompany the trio on their flight. This mission will be Moses' sixth flight to space aboard VSS Unity.

VSS Unity pilots

Sitting inside the cockpit of VSS Unity will be Galactic 04 commander Kelly Latimer and mission pilot C.J. Sturckow. Both have extensive backgrounds in spaceflight and worked at NASA before joining Virgin Galactic. Now, the two are becoming familiar faces for the Galactic missions.

Latimer served at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center and logged thousands of hours as a research pilot. Notably, after joining Virgin, Latimer was given the chance to fly the Cosmic Girl carrier plane during Virgin Orbit's first successful satellite launch in 2021. (Virgin Orbit, a sister company of Virgin Galactic, filed for bankruptcy this past April.)

Sturckow is a former NASA astronaut who flew four space shuttle missions between joining the agency as an astronaut in 1995 and his retirement in 2013. He joined Virgin Galactic that same year and sat in the cockpit for the company's first spaceflight in December 2018.

VMS Eve pilots

Manning the cockpits of VMS Eve for Galactic 04 are commander Nicola Pecile and pilot Jameel Janjua.

Pecile has logged more than 7,700 flight hours in an impressive 170 different types of aircraft. Before joining Virgin Galactic, Pecile served as a lieutenant colonel in the Italian Air Force. At Virgin, Pecile flew to space for the first time aboard VSS Unity, during the Galactic 01 mission in June of this year. 

Janjua has a masters of science in aeronautics and astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and is a retired Canadian Air Force Major with an extensive background as a test pilot. Janjua also flew as VMS Eve's pilot during Galactic 01.

After releasing VSS Unity, VMS Eve will be piloted back to Spaceport America for a runway landing at the end of the Galactic 04 mission.

Virgin Galactic is not planning to livestream Friday's launch, but the company has said it will provide updates of the flight via its social media channels.

The slip will "give our team an additional day to complete vehicle prep and checks. We look forward to taking to the skies in a few days!" Virgin Galactic wrote via X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday (Oct. 1).

The upcoming mission, called Galactic 04, will send three paying customers to suborbital space and back on Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity space plane. Unity will lift off beneath the wings of its carrier plane, VMS Eve, from New Mexico's Spaceport America.

Related: Virgin Galactic launches 3 of its original space tourist customers to the final frontier (video)

The three customers are British advertising executive Trevor Beattie, American astronomy educator Ron Rosano and adventurer Namira Salim, who will become the first Pakistani to reach the final frontier.

The trio will be joined in Unity's cabin by Beth Moses, Virgin Galactic's chief astronaut instructor. The space plane will be flown by Kelly Latimer and C.J. Sturckow, while Nicola Pecile and Jameel Janjua will pilot Eve.

Both vehicles will land back at Spaceport America when their duties are done. 

Galactic 04 will be Virgin's fourth commercial spaceflight endeavor, following similar efforts that took place in June, August and September of this year.

The company plans to fly roughly once per month with Unity for the foreseeable future. But the pace will really pick up in 2026 or so, when the first of the company's new "Delta class" of space planes comes online. Those vehicles are designed to launch as frequently as once per week, company representatives have said.

That failure occurred on Sept. 12, 2022, when an uncrewed research mission lifted off from Blue Origin's launch site in West Texas. About 65 seconds after launch, New Shepard's reusable first-stage booster experienced a serious problem and came crashing back to Earth. 

The vehicle's capsule engaged its emergency escape system and ended up landing softly under parachutes on the desert floor. The 36 research payloads that launched on the mission were unharmed, and the mishap caused no injuries or property damage, Blue Origin representatives said.

Related: Failure of Blue Origin's New Shepard a reminder that spaceflight is still hard

The company soon initiated a mishap investigation, which it conducted with oversight from the FAA and input from the National Transportation Safety Board and NASA's Flight Opportunities Program and Commercial Crew Office.

In March, Blue Origin announced that it had pinpointed the cause of the mishap — calling attention to the "thermo-structural failure" of the nozzle on the BE-3PM engine that powers New Shepard's first stage.

The FAA's newly closed investigation agrees with that finding, 

"The final report cites the proximate cause of the Sept. 12, 2022 mishap as the structural failure of an engine nozzle caused by higher-than-expected engine operating temperatures," agency officials wrote in a press release today (Sept. 27). 

The report also gives Blue Origin a to-do list ahead of New Shepard's return to flight. The company must "implement 21 corrective actions to prevent mishap reoccurrence, including redesign of engine and nozzle components to improve structural performance during operation as well as organizational changes," FAA officials wrote in today's release.

"Blue Origin must implement all corrective actions that impact public safety and receive a license modification from the FAA that addresses all safety and other applicable regulatory requirements prior to the next New Shepard launch," they added.

It's unclear what those required "organizational changes" may be; the FAA report isn't available for public release because it contains proprietary data and sensitive "export control" information, according to the agency. 

But we just learned that Blue Origin is shaking up its staff in a pretty big way: The company's CEO, Bob Smith, will step down in December and be replaced by Amazon executive Dave Limp. (Jeff Bezos founded both Amazon and Blue Origin.)

The September 2022 mission was the 23rd overall launch for New Shepard. Six of those flights have carried people.

In the time that New Shepard has been grounded, its chief competitor in the suborbital space tourism industry, Virgin Galactic, has launched four crewed missions with its VSS Unity space plane. 

The adventurer will become the first Pakistani to reach space on Virgin Galactic's next mission, called "Galactic 04," which is scheduled to launch from New Mexico's Spaceport America on Oct. 5.

"Thrilled to take to the #stars with @trevorbmbagency and @ronrosano aboard #Galactic04 with @virgingalactic. Inspiring #girls #women and #youth globally to reach for the stars," Salim posted on X (formerly known as Twitter) on Sunday (Sept. 17).

Related: Virgin Galactic launches 3 of its original space tourist customers to the final frontier (video)

Galactic 04 will carry three customers to suborbital space and back. Salim shouted out the other two in her post — British advertising executive Trevor Beattie and American astronomy educator Ron Rosano.

Joining these space tourists in the cabin of Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity space plane will be Beth Moses, Virgin Galactic's chief astronaut instructor. Kelly Latimer and C.J. Sturckow will fly the VSS Unity space plane on Galactic 04, and Nicola Pecile and Jameel Janjua will be at the controls of VMS Eve, the carrier plane that hauls Unity off the ground. (Eve drops Unity at an altitude of about 45,000 feet, or 13,700 meters; the space plane then lights up its rocket motor to get to suborbital space.)

As its name suggests, Galactic 04 will be Virgin's fourth commercial spaceflight. The previous three have all launched recently — in June, August and September, respectively.

Salim, the founder and chairperson of the nonprofit Space Trust, is a longtime adventurer. According to her website, she's the first Pakistani to visit both the North Pole (in April 2007) and the South Pole (in January 2008). 

She was one of the first 100 people to buy a ticket with Virgin Galactic, having booked her ride in 2006. Back then, the price was $200,000; it has since risen to $450,000.

The company announced today (Sept. 14) that it's targeting Oct. 5 for the launch of Galactic 04, its fourth commercial spaceflight and ninth space mission overall.

There will be three space tourists aboard, one apiece from the U.S., the U.K. and Pakistan. Galactic 04 will therefore break new ground: Nobody from Pakistan has made it to the final frontier before, according to Virgin Galactic.

Virgin Galactic hasn't released the names of the Galactic 04 trio yet. However, one of the crewmembers made such an announcement himself. "On Thursday 5th October I WILL FLY TO SPACE. I've waited all my life to write those words," British advertising executive Trevor Beattie, who bought his ticket more than 15 years ago, wrote today on X (formerly Twitter).

Related: Virgin Galactic launches 3 of its original space tourist customers to the final frontier (video)

Galactic 04 will lift off from Spaceport America in New Mexico, carrying the customers to suborbital space and back. 

They'll make the journey aboard Virgin's VSS Unity space plane, which will be hauled into the sky by a carrier craft named VMS Eve. Eve will drop Unity at an altitude of about 50,000 feet (15,000 meters); the space plane will then fire up its rocket motor to get to suborbital space.

The Galactic 04 trio will become Virgin Galactic's 17th, 18th and 19th astronauts, according to the company. Joining them in Unity's cabin will be Beth Moses, Virgin Galactic's chief astronaut instructor.

Kelly Latimer and C.J. Sturckow will fly VSS Unity, and Nicola Pecile and Jameel Janjua will be at Eve's controls.

VSS Unity passengers get to experience a few minutes of weightlessness and see Earth against the blackness of space. A ticket to ride the space plane currently costs $450,000.

The company is making good on its pledge to launch commercial missions roughly once per month with Unity; Galactic 01, Galactic 02 and Galactic 03 launched on June 29, Aug. 10 and Sept. 8, respectively. Virgin also launched two test flights with Unity this year, one each in April and May.

The pace should pick up considerably in 2026 or so, when Virgin Galactic's "Delta" line of space planes starts coming online. Those vehicles are designed to fly once per week, company representatives have said.

Virgin has one main competitor in the suborbital space tourist business: Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' aerospace company. However, Blue Origin's New Shepard vehicle hasn't flown in more than a year; it's been grounded since suffering a failure during an uncrewed flight on Sept. 12, 2022.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 2:15 p.m. ET on Sept. 14 with the announcement from Trevor Beattie.

Fragmentary remains of two ancient human relatives, Australopithecus sediba and Homo naledi, were carried aboard a Virgin Galactic flight on Sept. 8. Departing from Spaceport America in New Mexico, the fossils, carried by South African-born billionaire Timothy Nash in a cigar-shaped tube, were rocketed to the edge of space.

The fossils were chosen by Lee Berger, a National Geographic Society explorer in residence and the director of the Centre for the Exploration of the Deep Human Journey at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, who was instrumental in the discovery of both species. A fragment of the collarbone of 2 million-year-old A. sediba, first discovered by Berger's son Matthew in 2008, was chosen for the trip, as well as a thumb bone from H. naledi, the still-mysterious 300,000-year-old hominin found in the Rising Star cave in 2013 by a group of researchers Berger dubbed "Underground Astronauts."

Lee Berger did not reply to a request for comment by the time of publication, but in a statement, he noted that "the journey of these fossils into space represents humankind's appreciation of the contribution of all of humanity's ancestors and our ancient relatives," while Matthew Berger speculated that these hominins "never could have dreamed while alive of taking such an incredible journey as ambassadors of all of humankind's ancestors."

The fact that these ancient species would not have understood their journey into the upper atmosphere is one of many reasons anthropologists and others have critiqued the space flight.

Related: Virgin Galactic just launched 2 million-year-old fossils of human ancestors to space on tourist flight

In a thread on X (formerly Twitter), Alessio Veneziano, a biological anthropologist and co-organizer of the AHEAD conference (Advances in Human Evolution, Adaptation and Diversity), succinctly identified four main issues that have been discussed: 1) the lack of scientific justification for the flight; 2) ethical issues surrounding respect for human ancestral remains; 3) Berger's access to the fossils, which few other researchers share; and 4) the misrepresentation of the practice of palaeoanthropology.

The fossils' space journey has been roundly criticized for lacking a scientific purpose, especially since a malfunction on the mission could have destroyed the priceless specimens. Berger's original permit request, which was ultimately approved by the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA), mentioned that the goal of the journey was to promote science and bring global recognition to human origins research in South Africa rather than to address any scientific questions.

The effects of spaceflight on heritage items "hasn't been an area of scientific study," Justin Walsh, a professor of art and archaeology at Chapman University in California, told Live Science in an email. "Space archaeologists like me are definitely interested in the effect of the space environment on items in space," he said, "but I don't think we'd use a piece of heritage from here on Earth as a test article to see what happens to it."

"I am horrified that they were granted a permit," Sonia Zakrzewski, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Southampton in the U.K., wrote in an X thread, noting she would use it as an example in her class about unethical approaches. "This is NOT science."

Walsh echoed Zakrzewski's concerns with the ethics of the flight. Because the fossilized bones are not just scientific specimens but the remains of our collective ancestors, we owe them respect, Walsh said. For the purpose of the permit, however, the fossils appear to have been categorized as paleontological — rather than human — remains, getting around ethical and legal issues, which speaks to the larger, ongoing scientific discussion of who we consider to be "human."

"As a sovereign state, South Africa can manage its national estate as it sees fit, including shooting part of that estate into space like the US, Russia, Denmark, and others all have," Rachel King, an associate professor of cultural heritage studies at University College London, told Live Science in an email. But "the fact that it happened through what looks like a standard compliance procedure should make everyone think about potential wider consequences," she noted, including future events that may put archaeological heritage at risk of destruction.

That documentation is a key aspect of Berger's permit request, in which he justified the selection of the fossils — and mitigated the risk of their loss — because they have been "extensively studied" and "published many times." But there are few fossil hominin casts other than Homo naledi available for study and public viewing, often owing to a lack of financial and material resources in the countries in which they are found. On top of that, the final major critique of the fossils' space journey is the entitlement and privilege revealed by the flight.

The fossils were carried aboard Virgin Galactic by Nash, whose father John made his fortune in aviation. Nash was one of the first people to buy a ticket on the second commercial flight of Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic space plane. Nash has also been friends with Lee Berger for over a decade and owns most of the so-called Cradle of Humankind — including the land where the Bergers discovered A. sediba, which he hopes to develop into a "paleotourism" industry.

While most paleoanthropological researchers do not have the access to land and fossils afforded to Berger, the problem remains, in the eyes of many, that Berger has misrepresented what these researchers actually do.

"This is an unusual activity for ancient fossils," Walsh said, with "no sign that Berger was interested in performing science and answering that question [on the effects of spaceflight] by flying the fossils." Instead, in keeping with standard scientific practice, Walsh would have liked an open dialogue about the mission, including more information about the risks and benefits, prior to the flight.

"We should ask: Can the University of the Witwatersrand and Lee Berger be trusted to care for these fossils going forward, if this is what they think is an appropriate thing to do with them?" Walsh said.

New Shepard last launched on Sept. 12, 2022, on an uncrewed research mission from Blue Origin's site in West Texas. About 65 seconds after liftoff, the vehicle's reusable first-stage booster suffered a problem and crashed hard onto the desert floor. New Shepard's capsule engaged its emergency escape system and landed safely under parachutes, its 36 research payloads intact.

In March, Blue Origin announced the results of its anomaly investigation: The nozzle on the first stage's single BE-3PM engine suffered a "thermo-structural failure,"  which caused a thrust misalignment and brought the mission to a premature end.

Related: Failure of Blue Origin's New Shepard a reminder that spaceflight is still hard

In its March 24 announcement, Blue Origin said that it had begun implementing some corrective actions, "including design changes to the combustion chamber and operating parameters, which have reduced engine nozzle bulk and hot-streak temperatures." The company also stressed that it expected to return to flight "soon," with a re-launch of those same 36 research payloads.

But it's been 5.5 months since that update, and New Shepard still has not taken off. Blue Origin hasn't provided much more information about New Shepard's status or publicized a return-to-flight timeline.

The ill-fated September 2022 flight was called NS-23, because it was the 23rd New Shepard mission overall. Six of those have carried people to and from suborbital space; the most recent crewed flight launched in August 2022.

In the time that New Shepard has been grounded, Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin's chief competitor in the suborbital space tourism business, has launched four passenger missions with its VSS Unity space plane. 

Counting test flights, Virgin Galactic now has eight crewed space missions under its belt — two more than Blue Origin.

Both companies offer customers a few minutes of weightlessness and a view of Earth against the blackness of space. But VSS Unity stays aloft for considerably longer than New Shepard — 60 to 90 minutes, on average, compared to 10 to 12 minutes.

Virgin Galactic now has three commercial spaceflights under its belt. 

The company launched its Galactic 03 mission today (Sept. 8), sending three of its longest-standing ticketholders to suborbital space from Spaceport America in New Mexico.

"Welcome back to Earth, #Galactic03! Our pilots, crew and spaceship have landed safely at @Spaceport_NM," the company wrote in a post on X (formerly known as Twitter) after the flight concluded.

Related: Virgin Galactic launches 1st mother-daughter team and 1st Olympian to space on 2nd commercial flight (video)

The flight began at 10:34 a.m. EDT (1434 GMT) today, when Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity space plane lifted off beneath the wings its carrier craft, VMS Eve. Eve dropped Unity as planned at an altitude of 44,867 feet (13,675 meters), and the space plane then made its own way to the final frontier.

Aboard Unity were the three paying customers, who were among the first people to buy a ticket to fly with the company. They booked their seats as early as 2005, Virgin Galactic said in a preflight statement. (Virgin Galactic charged $200,000 per seat back in 2005, compared to $450,000 today.) 

The passengers were investor Ken Baxter from the United States, the first person to buy a civilian ticket for a Virgin Galactic tourist flight; Timothy Nash, an investor from South Africa; and Adrian Reynard, founder of Reynard Motorsport, from the United Kingdom.

The trio flew in Unity's cabin with Beth Moses, the company's chief astronaut instructor. In the space plane's cockpit were pilots Nicola Pecile and Michael Masucci.

The Galactic 03 crew experienced a few minutes of weightlessness and got to see Earth against the blackness of space. Their experience came to an end at 11:36 a.m. EDT (1536 GMT), when Unity touched down back at Spaceport America.

Virgin Galactic didn't livestream today's mission; it provided the above details via social media updates. The company also did not identify the three Galactic 03 customers in the days leading up to liftoff, which was a departure from previous procedures.

The Galactic 03 trio just became Virgin Galactic's 14th, 15th and 16th astronauts. The company has now flown three commercial missions in less than three months, and eight spaceflights overall. The other two commercial flights, Galactic 01 and Galactic 02, launched on June 29 and Aug. 10, respectively.

Virgin Galactic plans to continue launching Unity roughly once per month for the foreseeable future. But the cadence will pick up considerably a few years from now, if all goes according to plan: In 2026, Virgin Galactic plans to start bringing online its new "Delta class" of space planes, which will be capable of flying once per week.

Virgin Galactic has one chief competitor in the suborbital tourism business: Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, which flies people to the final frontier aboard its New Shepard vehicle. But New Shepard hasn't flown in nearly a year; the craft suffered an anomaly during an uncrewed research flight on Sept. 12, 2022 and hasn't left the ground since.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 3:15 p.m. EDT on Sept. 8 with flight statistics provided by Virgin Galactic. It was also corrected to state that Beth Moses, not Colin Bennett, was the astronaut instructor on board today's flight.

Virgin Galactic plans to launch its third commercial spaceflight on Friday (Sept. 8), but you won't be able to watch the action live.

The company is targeting Friday morning for the liftoff of the Galactic 03 mission, which will send three paying customers aloft from Spaceport America in New Mexico. 

Liftoff will occur around the same as Virgin Galactic's previous missions, company officials told Space.com via email — so, about 10:30 a.m. EDT (1430 GMT). But Galactic 03 won't be livestreamed; we'll have to rely on updates that Virgin Galactic provides via social media.

Related: Virgin Galactic launches 1st mother-daughter team and 1st Olympian to space on 2nd commercial flight (video)

In another departure from previous procedures, Virgin Galactic has not yet identified the three customers. Pretty much all we know is that they've been ticketholders for a long time.

"The three Galactic 03 crewmembers are the first of Virgin Galactic's group of 'Founder' astronauts — the first customers whose forward-thinking vision and early ticket purchases helped make the dream of regular commercial spaceflights a reality," Virgin Galactic wrote in a statement late last month.

"The Galactic 03 crew bought their tickets as early as 2005 and, since then, have been an active part of the company's vibrant Future Astronaut community," they added. (The ticket price back then was considerably cheaper than the current $450,000.)

The trio will fly aboard Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity space plane with Colin Bennett, one of the company's astronaut instructors. Unity will be piloted by Nicola Pecile and Michael Masucci.

Unity lifts off beneath the wings of VMS Eve, Virgin Galactic's carrier aircraft. Eve drops the space plane at an altitude of about 50,000 feet (15,000 meters), at which point Unity fires its rocket motor to get up to suborbital space. Both Unity and Eve come back to Earth for runway landings.

Galactic 03 is Virgin Galactic's third commercial spaceflight, after Galactic 02 on Aug. 10 and Galactic 01 on June 29. When test flights are included, VSS Unity has reached the final frontier a total of seven times to date.

The company announced today (Aug. 28) that it's targeting Sept. 8 for the launch of Galactic 03, its third commercial spaceflight and eighth space mission overall.

Galactic 03 will take three paying customers to and from suborbital space from Spaceport America in New Mexico. Virgin Galactic hasn't identified those passengers yet, but we know they've been ticket-holders for a long time.

Related: Virgin Galactic launches 1st mother-daughter team and 1st Olympian to space on 2nd commercial flight (video)

"The three Galactic 03 crewmembers are the first of Virgin Galactic's group of 'Founder' astronauts — the first customers whose forward-thinking vision and early ticket purchases helped make the dream of regular commercial spaceflights a reality," Virgin Galactic wrote in a statement today.

"The Galactic 03 crew bought their tickets as early as 2005 and, since then, have been an active part of the company's vibrant Future Astronaut community," they added.

The trio will become Virgin Galactic's 14th, 15th and 16th astronauts, according to the company. They'll fly with Colin Bennett, one of Virgin Galactic's astronaut instructors.

Galactic 03's passengers will ride in VSS Unity, Virgin Galactic's space place, which will be piloted by Nicola Pecile and Michael Masucci. The vehicle will lift off beneath the wings of the company's carrier aircraft, VMS Eve, which will drop it at an altitude of about 50,000 feet (15,000 meters). 

Unity will then fire up its onboard rocket motor, making its own way to suborbital space. The passengers will get to experience a few minutes of weightlessness and see Earth against the blackness of space before coming back down for a runway landing at Spaceport America.

The most recent such flight, Galactic 02, lifted off on Aug. 10, carrying a former Olympian and a mother-daughter duo to the final frontier for the first time. The daughter in that duo, an 18-year-old college student, also became the youngest person ever to reach space, according to Virgin Galactic.

Virgin Galactic is currently selling tickets for $450,000, but, given that the three customers on Galactic 03 are "founding astronauts," they likely didn't pay that much; the seat price has gone up a few times over the years.

This is what it's like to fly to suborbital space with Virgin Galactic.

The company aced its first-ever private astronaut mission last week, a six-person jaunt aboard its VSS Unity space plane called Galactic 02 that lifted off from New Mexico's Spaceport America.

Those six folks experienced a few minutes of weightlessness and got to see Earth against the blackness of space — something we can all get a small taste of, thanks to video Virgin Galactic captured during the flight. 

Related: Meet the crew of Virgin Galactic's 2nd commercial spaceflight

That footage includes glory shots of our gorgeous planet shot from outside Unity, as well as video of the four passengers inside the space plane's cabin. (The other two people on board Unity were in the cockpit, piloting the vehicle.)

We see the four passengers float around inside Unity, moving in microgravity for the first time. But they prioritize the view over flips and other acrobatics, mostly staying glued to the windows, wide-eyed in wonder at this new look at their home planet.

"I was shocked at the things that you feel," Galactic 02 crewmember Anastatia Mayers, an 18-year-old student at Aberdeen University in the United Kingdom, said during a postflight news conference on Aug. 10. 

"You are so much more connected to everything than you would expect to be," she added. "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."

Mayers flew with her mother, Keisha Schahaff, who won two seats aboard Unity in 2021 through a fundraising competition organized by Virgin Galactic and the nonprofit Space for Humanity.

Mayers and Schahaff, who are from Antigua and Barbuda, became the first mother-daughter duo to fly to space together, as well as the first women from a Caribbean nation to reach the final frontier. And Mayers is now the youngest person to have flown to space, according to Virgin Galactic.

Also on board Galactic 02 was 80-year-old Jon Goodwin, who competed in canoeing for the United Kingdom at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. Goodwin is the first former Olympian to reach space and just the second person with Parkinson's to do so, Virgin Galactic said. (He was diagnosed with the disease nine years ago.)

The fourth person in the cabin was Beth Moses, Virgin Galactic's chief astronaut instructor.

Virgin Galactic employs an air-launch system, sending VSS Unity aloft from a runway beneath the wings of a carrier plane called VMS Eve. Eve drops the space plane at an altitude of about 50,000 feet (15,000 meters), and Unity engages its onboard rocket motor to make its way to suborbital space.

As its name implies, Galactic 02 was the second commercial spaceflight for Virgin Galactic, following a June 29 mission for the Italian Air Force and the country's National Research Council. VSS Unity will fly roughly once per month from here on out, if all goes according to plan.

Virgin Galactic now has seven spaceflights under its belt overall. Unity flew five test missions leading up to Galactic 01, reaching suborbital space in December 2018, February 2019, May 2021, July 2021 and May 2023. 

Virgin Galactic just aced its second-ever commercial mission, setting a number of spaceflight records in the process. 

The company launched its "Galactic 02" flight today (Aug. 10), sending six people to suborbital space and back. Four of them were women, setting a new mark for most women on a single spaceflight, according to Virgin Galactic. (Four women were in Earth orbit simultaneously back in 2010, but they served on two different missions.) 

And three of those six were private passengers, each of whom blazed a new trail for space tourism. They included the first mother-daughter duo (one of whom became the youngest-ever spaceflyer), as well as the first former Olympian, to reach the final frontier.

"G 02 is a flight for the history books," Virgin Galactic's Sirisha Bandla, who reached space with the company during a July 2021 flight, said during a webcast of today's launch.

Related: Meet the crew of Virgin Galactic's 2nd commercial spaceflight

Virgin Galactic employs an air-launch system, which consists of the six-passenger VSS Unity space plane and a twin-fuselage carrier aircraft called VMS Eve. Eve hauls Unity to an altitude of about 50,000 feet (15,000 meters), then drops the space plane, which lights up its rocket motor to ascend to suborbital space.

Eve lifted off from Spaceport America in New Mexico today at 10:30 a.m. EDT (1430 GMT) and dropped Unity roughly 45 minutes later. The space plane reached a maximum speed of Mach 3 on Galactic-02 — three times the speed of sound — and a peak altitude of 55 miles (88.5 kilometers) before heading back down to Earth. It aced a runway touchdown at Spaceport America at 11:30 a.m. EDT (1530 GMT), according to Virgin Galactic.

The Galactic 02 crew, like all of Unity's passengers, experienced a few minutes of weightlessness today and got to see the curve of Earth against the blackness of space. 

A ticket to ride the space plane currently costs $450,000. Two of Galactic 02's three private passengers didn't pay their own way, however. Keisha Schahaff, who was born and raised in the Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda, won a seat during a fundraising competition organized by Virgin Galactic and Space for Humanity, a nonprofit that aims to make space accessible to a wider range of people.

Schahaff's win gave her two tickets, and she gave the second to her 18-year-old daughter Anastatia Mayers, who's studying philosophy and physics at Aberdeen University in the United Kingdom. In addition to the mother-daughter mark, the duo became the first women from a Caribbean nation to reach space, according to Virgin Galactic.

"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," Schahaff said before flight in a statement. "The fact that I am here, the first to travel to space from Antigua, shows that space really is becoming more accessible. I know I will be changed by my experience, and I hope I will be able to share that energy and inspire the people around me — in my role as a life coach, a mother and as an ambassador for our beautiful planet."

Mayers became the youngest person to reach space, according to Virgin Galactic. The previous mark was held by Oliver Daemen, who was also 18 when he flew to suborbital space with Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin in July 2021.

The third private passenger, 80-year-old Jon Goodwin, apparently did pay his own way. Goodwin competed as a canoeist for the United Kingdom in the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich; today, he became the first former Olympian to reach space.

He's also just the second person with Parkinson's to make it to the final frontier, according to Virgin Galactic. Goodwin was diagnosed with the disease nine years ago but has vowed not to let it stop him from chasing his dreams.

"From becoming an Olympian to canoeing between the peaks of Annapurna, to winning a six-day race in the Arctic Circle, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro (and cycling back down), I've always enjoyed rising to new challenges," Goodwin said in a preflight statement. "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. 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."

The fourth person in Unity's cabin today was Beth Moses, Virgin Galactic's chief astronaut instructor. She trained Schahaff, Mayers and Goodwin and went up today primarily to gather data to inform and improve the passenger experience on future flights.

Unity's two pilots, C.J. Sturckow and Kelly Latimer, also reached the final frontier on Galactic 02. Latimer, Moses, Schahaff and Mayers made Unity the first vehicle ever to take four women to space on a single flight. (Eve's two pilots, Mike Masucci and Nicola Pecile, did not reach the final frontier; the carrier plane does not make it anywhere near space.)

Related: The first space tourists (photos)

Galactic 02 was the seventh spaceflight overall for Virgin Galactic and VSS Unity. The first five were test flights, which occurred in December 2018, February 2019, May 2021, July 2021 and May 2023. 

By the way, the July 2021 mission — the one Bandla flew on — included Virgin Group founder Richard Branson among its passengers.

The company's first commercial mission, Galactic 01, lifted off from Spaceport America on June 29, carrying four people aloft for the Italian Air Force and the country's National Research Council. So Galactic-02 notched another first for Virgin Galactic: its first private astronaut mission.

Virgin Galactic plans to launch Unity roughly once per month from here on out. But the company's overall flight cadence could pick up significantly in a few years, when its new "Delta class" of space planes begins coming online. Those vehicles will be capable of flying once per week, Virgin Galactic representatives have said.

"That's going to be a big sea change when that occurs," Mike Moses, the company's president of spaceline missions and safety, told Space.com in late May. "I'm really looking forward to that from my commercial operations perspective. That's one of the reasons I joined this company, was to get to a place where space travel is a lot more routine for more folks."

Editor's note: This story was updated at 12:50 p.m. ET on Aug. 10 with the official flight statistics from Virgin Galactic. It was updated again at 3:30 to note that Mayers became the youngest person to reach space.

Update for 12 pm ET: Virgin Galactic has successfully launched (and landed) its Galactic-02 space tourist flight, marking a major milestone as the company begins commercial spaceliner service. You can see photos and video of the launch in our wrap story.

Virgin Galactic is targeting Aug. 10 for the launch of its second commercial spaceflight mission, known as Galactic-02. 

The mission will ferry three private astronauts on a suborbital spaceflight aboard the Virgin Galactic's reusable space plane, VSS Unity. Coverage for the mission begins at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT), according to the company's website. You can watch it live here on Space.com at launch time.

VSS Unity doesn't reach orbit, but its trajectory does create several minutes of weightlessness for the passengers, at an altitude high enough for them to see the curvature of Earth against the blackness of space.

Related: Meet the crew of Virgin Galactic's 2nd commercial spaceflight

What time is the Galactic-02 suborbital launch?

Though an exact time for liftoff hasn't been announced, it is expected to occur shortly after Virgin Galactic begins its live coverage. 

Liftoff will occur from Spaceport America in New Mexico. Virgin Galactic's carrier plane, VMS Eve, will haul VSS Unity aloft and carry the space plane to an altitude of about 50,000 feet (15,000 meters). At that point, Eve will drop Unity, which will ignite its rocket motor and ascend to suborbital space.

The exact mission length is uncertain. On Virgin Galactic's first commercial flight, late June's Galactic-01, about 1.5 hours passed between takeoff of VMS Eve and the landing of VSS Unity, which will glide back to Earth at Spaceport America. 

Can I watch Virgin Galactic's Galactic-02 spaceflight?

Yes! While Virgin Galactic only provided updates via X (formerly known as Twitter) during the Galactic-01 mission, the company is planning to livestream Galactic-02. 

Beginning at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT), on Aug. 10, a livestream will be available on Virgin Galactic's website. The extent to which that stream will cover the whole mission is yet unclear. It is possible that viewers will see initial events unfold during VMS Eve's takeoff at Spaceport America and nothing more. It's also possible Virgin will broadcast Galactic-02 in its entirety, giving audiences a view of VSS Unity's flight and crew from liftoff to landing. 

Who is riding on the Galactic-02 spaceflight?

In total, six people will be fly to space aboard VSS Unity: The space plane's commander C.J. Sturckow and pilot Kelly Latimer, their three private passengers and the Virgin Galactic astronaut instructor who trained the trio for their flight.

Both Sturckow and Latimer have extensive NASA backgrounds and have flown with Virgin Galactic for several years.

Photos: The first space tourists

• Sturckow was a NASA astronaut from 1995 to 2013. He flew four space shuttle missions, including the first shuttle to launch to the International Space Station (ISS). He sat at the helm during Virgin Galactic's first flight to space, and will count Galactic-02 as his ninth spaceflight upon its completion.
• Latimer was the first woman to serve as a research pilot at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center. During her career, she has flown thousands of hours in the cockpit of dozens of different aircraft. She was at the helm of VMS Eve during Virgin Galactic's first commercial spaceflight mission in June, but Galactic-02 will be her first flight to space. 

Three private passengers are boarding VSS Unity for the Galactic-02 mission, and they are setting some spaceflight firsts. Two of the seats for this flight were made possible through a fundraiser with the nonprofit organization Space for Humanity, which strives to make spaceflight more accessible to diverse peoples across the globe.

• Jon Goodwin: Jon Goodwin competed as a canoeist in the 1972 Munich Olympic games, and will be the first Olympian to fly to space. He is now 80 years old and has lived with a Parkinson's disease diagnosis for the past nine years. A lifelong adventurer, he sees his trip to space as another milestone in his ongoing active lifestyle. 
• Keisha Schahaff: Born and raised in Antigua and Barbuda, Schahaff won her seat aboard Galactic-02 as a part of Space for Humanity's fundraising competition. She works as a health and wellness coach, which she says is a career partially born from her love for the stars. Schahaff was allowed to invite one person to accompany her on her trip to space, and she chose her daughter.
• Anastatia Mayers: At 18 years old, Mayers studies philosophy and physics at Aberdeen University in the United Kingdom. Growing up with her mother in Antigua and Barbuda, Mayers said in an interview with Virgin Galactic that she never dreamed she would reach such heights. She and Schahaff will be the first mother-daughter duo to fly to space together.

Two people will be at the controls of VMS Eve during Galactic-02. They'll be responsible for a number of important activities, including the release of VSS Unity and the return of VMS Eve to Spaceport America's runway at the end of the mission. They are:

• Commander Mike Masucci: Before joining Virgin Galactic, Masucci served as a lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force. While VMS Eve doesn't make it to space as a part of its flight profile, Masucci flew VSS Unity on Galactic-01.
• Pilot Nicola Pecile: Pecile has flown on 170 different aircraft since beginning his flying career in 1991, which included service in the Italian Air Force as a lieutenant colonel. He has a total of 7,700 flight hours, according to Virgin Galactic.

How long will Virgin Galactic's spaceflight last?

Virgin Galactic's first commercial mission lasted about 90 minutes from VMS Eve's takeoff to the return of VSS Unity. At their peak altitude, the Galactic-02 crew will experience around four minutes of weightlessness, during which they will be literally free to float about the cabin. 

VSS Unity will then glide back to New Mexico to land, wheels down, on the Spaceport America runway.

Virgin Galactic's launch system involves a double-fuselage airplane, which carries the smaller SpaceShipTwo vehicle, VSS Unity, as a payload. VMS Eve, the carrier plane, takes off from a runway at Virgin's Spaceport America, in New Mexico, and flies to around 50,000 feet (15,000 meters), before dropping VSS Unity, which fires its rocket motor to climb the rest of the way to space.

Galactic-01, Virgin's first commercial mission, flew a trio from Italy's Air Force and National Research Council. That group was able to perform a handful of science experiments during their few minutes of weightlessness. Galactic-02 will be slightly less science-focused, but it is breaking ground in a number of other ways.

Related: What is Virgin Galactic, and what do they do?

A fundraiser through the nonprofit organization Space for Humanity selected a winner for a seat on a Virgin Galactic flight as part of the organization's mission to increase space's accessibility to people worldwide. Thanks to this contest, the first mother-daughter duo will fly to space on Galactic-02. The mission will also carry a former Olympian to the final frontier for the first time.

Jon Goodwin

Jon Goodwin is a former British olympian, who was part of the canoeing team at the 1972 games in Munich. Now, at 80 years old, Goodwin has lived with a Parkinson's diagnosis for the last nine years, but says he doesn't let it slow him down. 

Since his diagnosis, Goodwin has continued an active lifestyle. Among other adventures, he climbed up, and then cycled down, Mount Kilimanjaro. Now, he will become the second person with Parkinson's to fly to space.

"When I got diagnosed with Parkinson's, I thought, 'Well, that's it, they're not going to accept me any longer,'" he said during a Virgin Galactic interview, referring to his perceived prospects of flying with the company. Goodwin appreciates Virgin Galactic's approach to space, and the idea that it's for everyone. 

"The fact that I am now one of the three of the first commercial trips to go into space, and with suffering with Parkinson's for nine years, just shows you this attitude of 'space for all' is a wonderful attitude," Goodwin said.

Keisha Schahaff

Keisha Schahaff won her seat on the Galactic-02 crew as a part of a fundraising competition from Space for Humanity. Part of the organization's mission is to share the perspective of space, and the cognitive phenomenon known as the overview effect, with as diverse a range of humanity as possible.

Schahaff is 46 and has lived in the Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda her whole life. She says her love of the stars led her on a journey to Buddhism, and, ultimately, to a career as a health and wellness coach. Her contest winnings included a second ticket, which she gifted to her daughter, Anastatia Mayers. The two will be the first people from the Caribbean islands to fly to space, fulfilling a lifelong dream for them both. 

"The way I see this whole act of space traveling, or space accessibility and development — it's truly not an egoistical adventure. It's an adventure of humility and humanity. And just bringing everybody together under this one umbrella, understanding that this is for all of us," Schahaff said during a Virgin Galactic interview.

Anastatia Mayers

Anastatia Mayers, daughter of Keisha, is an 18-year-old student at Aberdeen University in the United Kingdom. She studies philosophy and physics and is grateful her mother chose her as her spaceflight companion, even though she jokes that she gave her no choice. 

"She was talking to one of her friends about the possibility of going to space, and she offered them a seat to come with her. I turned around, and I looked at them and I was like, 'What do you mean, can she come with you?! Obviously, it will be me! If anyone is gonna get to go to space with you, it will be me.' And although I said that jokingly, I was definitely serious. And she took me seriously, thank god," Mayers said in a Virgin Galactic video. 

Mayers wants to be an astrobiologist, which she says seemed completely out of reach for a long time. Now, studying at university and also heading to space, Mayers' goals appear attainable.

"That thought seemed like it was so big, and almost so impossible that I really didn't think I would ever have the opportunity to pursue it [...]  I think it's so beautiful that Virgin Galactic's mission is to expand this to civilians, to normal people, to people who have an idea and haven't yet put that idea into place," Mayers said. 

Virgin Galactic Chief Astronaut Instructor Beth Moses

Beth Moses earned her astronaut wings with Virgin Galactic in 2019, when she became the first woman to fly aboard a commercial space vehicle, according to Virgin Galactic. Moses is Virgin's astronaut 002 and serves as the company's chief astronaut instructor.

Moses was responsible for training the Galactic-02 crew and will accompany the trio on their flight. This mission will be Moses' fourth flight to space with Virgin Galactic.

VSS Unity pilots

Sitting inside the cockpit for VSS Unity will be Galactic-02 commander C.J. Sturckow and mission pilot Kelly Latimer. Both are seasoned pilots, with years of experience at NASA as well as at Virgin Galactic. 

Sturckow became a NASA astronaut in 1995 and has four space shuttle missions under his belt, including STS-88, which was the first shuttle flight to the International Space Station. He retired from NASA in 2013 and joined Virgin Galactic the same year. Sturckow was also in the cockpit for Virgin Galactic's first flight to space, in 2019. 

Latimer served as a research pilot at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center, where she gained thousands of hours flying dozens of aircraft. Latimer flew in the cockpit of the Cosmic Girl carrier plane during Virgin Orbit's first successful satellite launch in 2021. (Virgin Orbit, a sister company of Virgin Galactic, filed for bankruptcy this past April.)

VMS Eve pilots

Manning the cockpits of VMS Eve for Galactic-02 are commander Nicola Pecile and pilot Mike Masucci. 

Pecile has logged more than 7,700 flight hours in 170 different types of aircraft, and he flew VSS Unity on his first visit to space during the Galactic-01 mission. Before his time with Virgin Galactic, Pecile served in the Italian Air Force as a lieutenant colonel.

Masucci served as a lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force before he joined Virgin Galactic. He sat at the helm of VSS Unity during the Galactic-01 mission. 

Neither Pecile nor Masucci will reach space on Thursday; VMS Eve heads back to Earth for a runway landing after releasing VSS Unity.

Virgin Galactic is planning to livestream Thursday's launch on its website. During Galactic-01, the company said that Galactic-02 would kick off a roughly monthly cadence of launches moving forward, so Galactic-03 could potentially fly as soon as mid-September.