Virgin Galactic reaches space in overdue commercial debut

Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. sent paying customers to the edge of space for the first time, a milestone for the Richard Branson-founded company almost two decades in the making. The VSS Unity craft reached space at about 9:30 a.m. local time in New Mexico, Virgin Galactic revealed in a livestream of the event on its website Thursday. That was about an hour after the flight took off, carrying six people on board, including researchers from the Italian Air Force and the National Research Council of Italy. The commercial debut officially ushers Virgin Galactic into the ranks of space tourism providers alongside the likes of Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin LLC. Virgin Galactic has said it expects to move soon to a regular cadence of monthly commercial flights, bringing in much-needed revenue. While the company has carried employees on several previous test missions, the latest launch was the first with ticket-holding passengers. It’s Virgin Galactic’s highest-profile flight since Branson flew to the edge of space in 2021. “This is a big deal,” Mike Moses, Virgin Galactic’s president of spaceline missions and safety, said in an interview before the launch. “It’s the thing we were founded for.” It comes much later than planned: Virgin Galactic was started in 2004 and had hoped to ferry tourists to the cosmos as early as 2008. Over the years, the company has endured numerous delays and setbacks, including fatal accidents, regulatory investigations and lawsuits. The company has lost hundreds of millions of dollars each year since it went public in 2019 while generating only nominal revenue.<br/>