Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: SPCE) is a commercial spaceflight company developing and operating spacecraft for private individuals and research customers. The firm’s primary business is suborbital human spaceflight, offering passengers a brief trip to the edge of space aboard its reusable spaceplane. In parallel, the company is building out infrastructure and support services for suborbital payload deployments and microgravity research missions.
The core flight system consists of a carrier aircraft, WhiteKnightTwo, which lifts the spaceplane SpaceShipTwo to high altitude before release. Once deployed, SpaceShipTwo ignites its hybrid rocket motor to carry passengers and experiments to altitudes above 50 miles, where they experience several minutes of weightlessness before gliding back to a conventional runway landing. Facilities include engineering and manufacturing sites in Mojave, California, and a dedicated launch complex and mission control center at Spaceport America in New Mexico.
Virgin Galactic was founded in 2004 by Sir Richard Branson as part of the Virgin Group and has since completed multiple test flights, achieving its first suborbital milestone in late 2018. The company went public in 2019 through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company and now trades under the symbol SPCE. Leadership is led by CEO Michael Colglazier and overseen by a board chaired by investor Chamath Palihapitiya. With a globally dispersed customer base, Virgin Galactic continues to pre-sell tickets for tourism flights and develop research partnerships to expand access to space.