Virgin Galactic successfully flew a commercial crew into the upper reaches of Earth's atmosphere from New Mexico's Spaceport America on Friday morning for the fourth time in as many months, marking the continuation of a goal set by the space tourism company's CEO.
The commercial mission, dubbed "Galactic 04," took off from the Spaceport just before 9:30 a.m. on Friday and landed back on New Mexico soil about an hour later, at 10:25 a.m. Three private astronauts were on board Virgin Galactic's spaceship, VSS Unity, during Friday's flight, including Ron Rosano from the United States, Trevor Beattie from the United Kingdom and Namira Salim from Pakistan.
Those three marked the 17, 18 and 19 astronauts, respectively, to fly with Virgin Galactic. Including a May 25 test flight with a crew of Virgin Galactic "mission specialists," Friday's mission represents the fifth time the company has flown people into zero gravity in the past five months.
Michael Colglazier, Virgin Galactic's CEO, has said on previous earnings calls that the company's goal is to fly people into the upper reaches of the atmosphere at a cadence of one flight per month. During Virgin's Q1 2023 earnings call on May 9, Colglazier said the company was "at the cusp" of commercial spaceline operations.
Those operations have in the months since taken off. Virgin Galactic flew its first commercial mission, "Galactic 01," with a crew including officers from the Italian Air Force and an Italian researcher on June 29, about a month after its test flight.
Then, on August 10, Virgin Galactic flew private astronauts into zero gravity for the first time on its "Galactic 02" mission, marking the first time the company had achieved its long-time objective of flying private, paying customers high above the Earth.
Virgin Galactic has now done that two more times — a flight with a three-person private astronaut crew on September 8, and Friday's mission.
"Our teams in New Mexico and California have delivered on our monthly spaceflight objectives," Colglazier said in a statement Friday.
During Virgin Galactic's Q2 2023 earnings call on Aug. 1, Doug Ahrens, the company's chief financial officer, said Virgin expects five flights out of Spaceport America before the end of the year. It's now achieved three of those five expected flights.
And the company could hit an even higher flight cadence once its next generation of spaceships, called the "Delta" class, come into operation. Colglazier touted the "strong returns" of that class of ships during Virgin's Q1 2023 earnings call, saying "investing in this program is our top priority to drive future growth and profitability."
"These early missions with our initial ship, VSS Unity, have informed and confirmed the design and maintenance objectives for our Delta class spaceships, and the production tooling for those ships is on track to commence later in the fourth quarter," Colgalzier said in his Friday statement.
Those Delta-class ships will be assembled at a facility outside of Phoenix.
Like Virgin's Sept. 8 commercial mission, the company didn't livestream Friday's flight, but did post updates on its X (formerly known as Twitter) account. That meets another goal set down by Colglazier to "first and foremost focus on our customers, deliver the experience they want, deliver the quality and not kind of overly commercialize their personal experience," the CEO said during Virgin's Q2 2023 earnings call.
The company is yet to announce the date of its Q3 2023 earnings call. Its stock price (NYSE: SPCE) opened Friday at $1.60 and sits at $1.69 at the time of publishing. That stock price has trended downward from a July 31 high of $4.28 over the past three months, per MarketWatch.
