Virgin Galactic Postpones Its New Spaceship's First Commercial Flight To 2027

It’s currently running a poll for the new vehicle’s name.

Virgin Galactic

Virgin Galactic has been developing its "Delta class" of spaceships for a while now. It even stopped offering trips to suborbital space in 2024 after seven successful commercial flights to focus on its next-gen vehicle. The company had been preparing for the new spaceship's debut later this year and was originally planning to put it through a series of tests over the next few months leading up to its first commercial flight in the fourth quarter of 2026. But Virgin Galactic apparently faced several issues with the vehicle's assembly, and it has now announced that the new ship's debut commercial flight will take place in February 2027 at the earliest. 

Michael Colglazier, Virgin Galactic's CEO, announced the delay in an earnings call, according to SpaceNews. He said it wasn't one single issue that forced the company to push back the new vehicle's commercial flights, but "hundreds of relatively small but important installation tasks" related to its construction. He explained that his team encountered many instances wherein a component is "a few thousandths of an inch taller or shorter" than it's supposed to be. A delay will give them more time to correct issues and make sure the vehicle has been properly built. The company plans to start conducting ground tests on the vehicle later this month.

Colglazier has also revealed during the call that the company has already sold over 50 tickets at $750,000 each for future suborbital tourist flights. He said Virgin Galactic sold over $50 million in bookings from that tranche of tickets, which it started selling in March. Despite the delay, the CEO expects the company's financials to be just fine. He said a second spaceship is already in production and is scheduled to also be used for commercial flights sometime in the second quarter of 2027. The company, he said, intends to launch 10 flights a month by the end of that quarter.

By the way, we keep calling the new vehicle just the "spaceship," because it has yet to be named. Virgin Galactic has opened a poll where people can cast their vote on what they want the spacecraft to be called. Voters can only choose between four options — Horizon, Explorer, Ascend and Apeiron — so there's no chance of the new spaceship being named something akin to Boaty McBoatface. 

Reporting from Engadget contributed to this story.