Virgin Galactic's first "Delta-class" space plane just made its maiden voyage.
The next-gen suborbital vehicle, named Apeiron (Greek for "Boundless"), lifted off for the first time ever on Thursday (Oct. 28). Flying beneath the wings of its carrier aircraft, VMS Eve, Apeiron traveled from Virgin's manufacturing site in Mesa, Arizona, to its launch site, Spaceport America in New Mexico.
"Seeing the ship fly beneath Eve to Spaceport America was a moment years in the making," Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said in a statement on Thursday. "To our team and our astronaut community: your Spaceship has arrived."
Apeiron will undergo a series of checks and tests at Spaceport America, leading up to a planned start of commercial service in the spring of 2027.
During those customer flights, Eve will carry Apeiron to an altitude of about 45,000 feet (13,700 meters), then drop the space plane. Apeiron will fire up its onboard rocket motor, which will carry the six-passenger, two-pilot vehicle to suborbital space.
Passengers will experience a few minutes of weightlessness and get to see the curve of Earth against the blackness of space before coming down for a runway landing back at Spaceport America.
Virgin Galactic has done this before, with its VSS Unity space plane. Unity flew seven commercial suborbital missions during its operational life, which ran from June 2023 to June 2024.
Apeiron and other Delta-class planes are built for a much heavier workload, according to Virgin Galactic.
"Designed to fly twice per week with a vehicle lifetime of more than 500 missions, each Spaceship in the next-generation fleet is built to support the economics of a scaled commercial operation, with increased flight cadence and a cost profile unprecedented in the industry," company representatives wrote in the same statement.
And there will indeed be a fleet, if all goes to plan. The second Delta ship is under construction, for example, and is expected to enter service in mid-2027, according to Virgin Galactic.
Apeiron and its Delta-class siblings will need to fly a lot to deal with Virgin Galactic's backlog: Nearly 700 ticket-holders are currently waiting to fly, according to the company. And demand remains high; the latest batch of seats, which were priced at $750,000 apiece, sold out. Virgin plans to sell the next tranche of tickets for $850,000 each, LATTE Luxury News reported.
When Apeiron gets up and running, it will be the only game in town for suborbital space tourists.
Virgin Galactic once shared the skies with Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, which flew paying customers to the final frontier on its New Shepard vehicle. New Shepard conducted 14 crewed suborbital flights between July 2021 and January 2026 but is currently grounded while the company focuses on helping NASA land Artemis astronauts on the moon.
