On August 10th, the private space company Virgin Galactic conducted its second commercial space tourism flight, marking the first time a spacecraft carried paying private tourists.
According to CNBC, the space tourism mission is called Galactic 02, with the flight launched from Spaceport America in New Mexico. The company’s spacecraft was piloted by C.J. Sturckow and Kelly Latimer, carrying four passengers including Beth Moses, Virgin Galactic’s astronaut instructor, and three private passengers.
Virgin Galactic conducts the Galactic 02 mission space flight. (Video by Virgin Galactic).
The three private passengers aboard Galactic 02 were former British Olympic athlete Jon Goodwin and two passengers from the Caribbean, Keisha Schahaff and Anastia Mayers, who won their seats in a charity raffle organized by the nonprofit Space for Humanity.
The flight took the group of passengers to an altitude of 80 kilometers, approximately 262,000 feet, which is recognized by the United States as the boundary of space. The spacecraft safely returned to land at Spaceport America, successfully completing the flight.
This mission is Virgin Galactic’s seventh space flight to date and the third since May 2023. The company aims to launch its VSS Unity spacecraft carrying tourists at a pace of once a month. Virgin Galactic is developing a fleet of space tourism vehicles, referred to as “Delta Class”, which is expected to debut in 2026, flying at a weekly frequency.
Virgin Galactic employs a two-step flight system known as “air launch” to transport passengers on suborbital spaceflights.
This type of space tourism flight offers passengers a few minutes of weightlessness, at a lower cost compared to longer, more complex private orbital flights that are very expensive and conducted by billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
During Virgin Galactic’s Q2 earnings call, CEO Michael Colglazier addressed concerns about the harsh travel experience following the Titan submersible tragedy earlier in 2023.
Colglazier emphasized: “The fact is that we have had no failures with flights carrying Virgin Galactic customers.”
The company completed its first commercial space flight, the Galactic 01 mission, in June 2023, carrying members of the Italian Air Force.
Virgin Galactic currently has about 800 potential space tourists on its waiting list. Many of the tickets were sold over a decade ago at prices ranging from $200,000 to $250,000, and the company resumed ticket sales two years ago with a starting price of $450,000 per passenger seat.
