Space Tourism – Spaceflight Now

Virgin Galactic to move remaining SpaceShipTwo test flights to New Mexico

May 10, 2019

Virgin Galactic will conduct the remaining test flights for the company’s SpaceShipTwo suborbital rocket plane from southern New Mexico after moving staff and equipment from California over the next few months, officials announced Friday.

Blue Origin ‘one step closer’ to human flights after successful suborbital launch

May 2, 2019

Taking another step toward flying space tourists to the edge of space, Jeff Bezos’s space company Blue Origin again flew its New Shepard suborbital booster Thursday with a package of microgravity research experiments.

Blue Origin readies reusable suborbital launcher for another flight

May 1, 2019

Blue Origin teams in West Texas are preparing for another launch of the company’s reusable New Shepard suborbital rocket Thursday to loft dozens of microgravity research payloads to the edge of space.

Virgin Galactic stages second piloted spaceflight

February 22, 2019

Two test pilots and their instructor flew Virgin Galactic’s winged spaceplane out of the discernible atmosphere Friday for the second time in nine weeks, a successful sub-orbital flight that moves Richard Branson’s company one step closer to its goal of launching paying passengers and payloads on brief forays into the weightlessness of space.

New Shepard launches NASA experiments to space, aims for human flights this year

January 23, 2019

Blue Origin, the commercial space company founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, launched a package of NASA experiments to the edge of space Wednesday from West Texas with a suborbital New Shepard booster, then successfully recovered the reusable rocket and space capsule a few minutes later.

Blue Origin plans New Shepard launch Wednesday

January 19, 2019

Blue Origin plans to launch its single stage New Shepard suborbital booster Wednesday as the commercial space company moves closer to flying people to the edge of space.

Blue Origin scrubs suborbital launch attempt, delays flight to early 2019

December 18, 2018

Blue Origin scrubbed the planned launch Tuesday of the company’s suborbital New Shepard booster from West Texas due to a “ground infrastructure issue,” and later said the flight would be pushed back to early 2019.

Video and photo highlights of Virgin Galactic’s historic SpaceShipTwo test flight

December 14, 2018

Check out video highlights released by Virgin Galactic of Thursday’s test flight by the company’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane to an altitude of 271,000 feet, above a boundary recognized by the U.S. government as the edge of space.

Virgin Galactic accomplishes milestone test flight to the edge of space

December 13, 2018

With two veteran test pilots at the controls, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane climbed to the edge of space for the first time Thursday in a major achievement for Richard Branson’s long-sought ambition to begin regular commercial hops with space tourists, and the first piloted flight by a U.S. vehicle above an altitude of 50 miles since the last space shuttle mission in 2011.

Virgin Galactic’s rocket plane climbs closer to space

July 27, 2018

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane, built to eventually carry commercial passengers to the edge of space, accomplished another powered test flight into the rarefied upper atmosphere Thursday with two pilots on-board.