This story is republished from Source NM as a part of our commitment to bringing you the best in independent news coverage that matters to Albuquerque.

By DANIELLE PROKOP / Source NM

Virgin Galactic launched its seventh, and last flight with the Unity ship, out of the New Mexico Spaceport Saturday.

The four passengers on the commercial flight and two experiments from Purdue University and University of California Berkeley.

The four customers were Turkish researcher Tuva Atasever; SpaceX propulsion engineer Andy Sadhwani; former real estate developer Irving Izchak Pergament, and London hotel and resort investment strategist Giorgio Manenti.

 Turkish researcher Tuva Atasever displayed the Turkish and Azerbaijani flags after completing the near-spaceflight on Saturday, June 8, 2024. Atasever was working to monitor blood distribution and spinal fluid movement during the flight, examine how much radiation he was exposed to and insulin uptake in microgravity. ‘Kudos, hats off to all the rocket engineers, who developed this beautiful, beautiful rocket engine,’ he said afterwards. (Danielle Prokop / Source NM)

At an apogee of 54.4 miles, the flight made it into the fuzzy line between the Earth’s atmosphere and space, defined by NASA as 50 miles above the Earth’s surface, but below the imaginary boundary of the Kámán Line, measured about 62 miles above the planet.

This flight, sent off with the cheers of several hundred observers, is the last commercial flight for at least two years.

In November Virgin Galactic laid off 185 employees, including 73 in New Mexico, as a strategy to pivot to building space planes with more seats, outlining a plan to fly several times a month when it returns in 2026.

The company has said the facility to build the crafts in Mesa, Arizona, is expected to be operational in 2024.

Virgin Galactic’s founder, billionaire Richard Branson, appeared at the launch site Saturday outside of Truth or Consequences. Branson joined Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier in heralding the future of the company.

“The new Delta-class of spaceship will be wonderful,” Branson said. “It will be like building aeroplanes so we can build one after the other, after the other, and in time start bringing the prices down and enabling more people to go to space.”

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  1. re Virgin Galactic –
    VG is doing so poorly it is about to be delisted from the Stock Market. This is probably the last of the “Pump and Dump” stock price manipulations the owners will be able to pull – they have made a lot of money doing it over the past few years.

    The Delta spaceship is interesting, but for what? There is really no future in this method of giving people a few minutes “in space” for $450,000. Are they going to test it to the point of getting FAA approval to fly it with passengers? Two years with no revenue and high expenses until it is even ready to fly? It doesn’t figure.

    Then remember that the White Knight – the airplane that lifts the Delta or Unity to its takeoff, is completely worn out and must be replaced. They have no time or money to do that, and don’t even talk about it any more. Without the new Lifter Airplane, there are no space plane flights.

    It’s over. Virgin Galactic is over. Spaceport America is over. We need to wake up and straighten things out, and stop pouring money into that hole.

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