Virgin Galactic's next-generation spaceships will be built in Mesa, Arizona, at a final assembly manufacturing facility announced on Thursday.
The global aerospace company said it signed a long-term lease near the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport. Virgin Galactic (NYSE: SPCE) said the facility will be able to produce six spaceships a year and bring on "well into the hundreds" of engineering and manufacturing employees in the process.
The exact number of employees the facility will employ and the timelines for hiring weren't immediately available.
Two buildings — at 35,896 square feet and 115,200 square feet — will make up the new campus in Mesa, according to the company. Virgin's new digs will have a 160-foot-wide door for the spacecraft to move in and out of the facility.
Virgin will manufacture its Delta-class spaceships at the Mesa facility, which has a target to reach space in 2025 by way of revenue-generating payload flights and private astronaut flights in 2026.
“Our spaceship final assembly factory is key to accelerating the production of our Delta fleet, enabling a rapid increase in flight capacity that will drive our revenue growth,” said Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier in a statement. “We’re thrilled to expand into the greater Phoenix area which is home to outstanding aerospace talent – and we look forward to growing our team and fleet at our new facility.”
The facility is under construction and is expected to be fully operational by late 2023, the company said.
Swami Iyer, Virgin Galactic’s president of aerospace systems, said Mesa was a good strategic fit as the company has operations in Southern California and Spaceport America is in southern New Mexico.
“Arizona is a growing innovation hub, geographically situated between our existing operations in Southern California and New Mexico," Iyer said in a statement. "This will allow us to accelerate progress from conceptual design to production to final assembly at scale as we capitalize on the many advantages Mesa and the greater Phoenix area offer.”
Colglazier said, ahead of its first-quarter earnings call, that Virgin would not start commercial flights in 2022 after initially being on track for the fourth quarter to begin commercial service at Spaceport America.
The Delta spaceships that will be manufactured in Mesa will have a turnaround time of one week between flights. In contrast, the VSS Unity vehicle, which launched Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson into space last July, can fly once per month.
Last summer, Branson along with four pilots and three additional “mission specialists” departed from Spaceport America, near Truth or Consequences on the Unity 22 space plane and reached 53 miles into the sky.
Two days prior to the flight, on July 9, 2021, shares of Virgin Galactic stock closed at $49.20 each. On July 14, 2022, shares of Virgin Galactic stock closed at $6.94 each.
