Virgin Galactic is a U.S. commercial spaceflight company within the Virgin Group that is developing commercial spacecraft and aims to provide suborbital spaceflights to space tourists, suborbital launches for space science missions, and orbital launches of small satellites. Further in the future, Virgin Galactic plans to provide orbital human spaceflights as well.[1] The company also hopes to develop an orbital launch vehicle. SpaceShipTwo, Virgin Galactic's suborbital spacecraft, is air launched from beneath a carrier aeroplane known as White Knight Two.
Virgin Galactic's founder, Richard Branson, had initially suggested that he hoped to see a maiden flight by the end of 2009,[2] but this date has been delayed on a number of occasions, most recently by the October 2014 in-flight loss of SpaceShipTwo.