COLORADO SPRINGS—Virgin Galactic plans to return to space later this month with a fully crewed test flight of the refurbished SpaceShipTwo spaceplane VSS Unity from Spaceport America in New Mexico prior to the start of commercial flights toward the end of June.

The Unity 25 mission will mark the company’s fifth suborbital spaceflight since the VSS Unity reached an altitude of 51.4 mi. in December 2018, and the first powered flight since company founder Richard Branson and three other employees flew on the vehicle into space in July 2021.

Virgin Galactic says the mission objectives are to “evaluate the overall astronaut spaceflight experience end to end and to perform a final assessment of the full spaceflight system before commercial service opens in late June.” The mission specialists, all Virgin Galactic employees, include chief astronaut instructor Beth Moses—the first woman to make a spaceflight on a commercially launched vehicle—who will be making her third flight on Unity.

Other crewmembers include astronaut instructor Luke Mays, flight sciences engineer Chris Huie and mission specialist Jamila Gilbert. The flight crew will be led by Unity commander Mike Masucci with C.J. Sturckow as pilot. The carrier aircraft, VMS Eve, will be commanded by former test pilot Jameel Janjua and Virgin Galactic veteran Nicola Pecile.

The return to powered flights follows the completion of a shakedown glide flight from the Spaceport in New Mexico on April 26. The 9-min. glide flight gathered data on the carrier’s improved four-point launch pylon for carrying the spaceplane, additional crew feedback on Eve’s revised horizontal stabilizers and data on the glide performance of the refurbished Unity. 

The powered flight is designed to pave the way for the long-awaited start of Virgin’s commercial space service with “Galactic 01”—a microgravity research mission for the Italian Air Force. This is due to be followed by private astronaut spaceflights later this year. As of late 2022, Virgin Galactic reported a backlog of around 1,000 seats for spaceflights, of which around 100 seats have been repurposed to the research market and the balance to travel reservation company Virtuoso.