Space

Virgin Galactic aims for triumphant return with crewed flight at the end of May

Comment

Virgin Galactic VSS Unity in flight
Image Credits: Virgin Galactic (opens in a new window)

Virgin Galactic will return to the skies later this month, in a crewed mission that the company hopes will bring to an end the nearly two-year gap since its first and only crewed flight in July 2021.

The space tourism company said Monday it will send a crew of four to space in late May. The main objective of the mission is to validate the spaceflight system and “astronaut experience” before officially commencing commercial service in June.

Virgin Galactic took people to space for the first time in July 2021, with a crew that included its billionaire founder Richard Branson. The company was no doubt riding high after that mission, but VG has been plagued by issues since. Some of them are technical; others are financial: the company has reported nearly $1.5 billion in operating losses since 2018. Losses have only ballooned over time, with VG telling investors that it burned $133 million in cash in the final quarter of last year, compared to just $65 million in Q4 2021.

Despite these losses, the company does still have substantial runway: nearly $1 billion at the end of last year. The news about this upcoming mission was announced just one day before the company is expected to report its quarterly results.

VG CEO Michael Colglazier has repeatedly assured investors that VG is focused on resuming spaceflights and carrying paying customers. The company has made a number of upgrades to its “mothership,” called VMS Eve, and the spacecraft, VSS Unity. VG’s approach involves strapping the spacecraft to the belly of the mothership and releasing it at around 50,000 feet; this is in contrast to a company like Blue Origin, which vertically launches a rocket that’s fitted with a crew capsule.

The crew includes Jamila Gilbert, who has been with Virgin Galactic since 2019; Christopher Huie, who joined Virgin in 2016 as a flight sciences engineer; Luke Mays, a NASA veteran who is now Virgin’s astronaut instructor; and Beth Moses, who has flown to space on two previous Virgin missions. Two pilots, Mike Masucci and CJ Sturckow, will also be on board.

The first commercial flight, currently set for June, will carry officers from the Italian Air Force. The company eventually hopes to fly 400 times per year with an upgraded line of motherships. At a ticket price of around $425,000 per seat, the company will need around that cadence to finally start returning profits. VG’s current plan is to start testing Delta-class ships by 2025 and enter commercial service the following year.

Virgin Galactic should not be confused with Virgin Orbit, the commercial company also founded by Branson that recently filed for bankruptcy. While Virgin Galactic aims to take humans to space, Virgin Orbit’s goal is to deliver very small payloads of satellites and other spacecraft to orbit.

The article has been updated to reflect that it has been two years since Virgin Galactic’s last crewed flight.

More TechCrunch

Looking Glass makes trippy-looking mixed-reality screens that make things look 3D without the need of special glasses. Today, it launches a pair of new displays, including a 16-inch mode that…

Looking Glass launches new 3D displays

Replacing Sutskever is Jakub Pachocki, OpenAI’s director of research.

Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI co-founder and longtime chief scientist, departs

Intuitive Machines made history when it became the first private company to land a spacecraft on the moon, so it makes sense to adapt that tech for Mars.

Intuitive Machines wants to help NASA return samples from Mars

As Google revamps itself for the AI era, offering AI overviews within its search results, the company is introducing a new way to filter for just text-based links. With the…

Google adds ‘Web’ search filter for showing old-school text links as AI rolls out

Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket will take a crew to suborbital space for the first time in nearly two years later this month, the company announced on Tuesday.  The NS-25…

Blue Origin to resume crewed New Shepard launches on May 19

This will enable developers to use the on-device model to power their own AI features.

Google is building its Gemini Nano AI model into Chrome on the desktop

It ran 110 minutes, but Google managed to reference AI a whopping 121 times during Google I/O 2024 (by its own count). CEO Sundar Pichai referenced the figure to wrap…

Google mentioned ‘AI’ 120+ times during its I/O keynote

Firebase Genkit is an open source framework that enables developers to quickly build AI into new and existing applications.

Google launches Firebase Genkit, a new open source framework for building AI-powered apps

In the coming months, Google says it will open up the Gemini Nano model to more developers.

Patreon and Grammarly are already experimenting with Gemini Nano, says Google

As part of the update, Reddit also launched a dedicated AMA tab within the web post composer.

Reddit introduces new tools for ‘Ask Me Anything,’ its Q&A feature

Here are quick hits of the biggest news from the keynote as they are announced.

Google I/O 2024: Here’s everything Google just announced

LearnLM is already powering features across Google products, including in YouTube, Google’s Gemini apps, Google Search and Google Classroom.

LearnLM is Google’s new family of AI models for education

The official launch comes almost a year after YouTube began experimenting with AI-generated quizzes on its mobile app. 

Google is bringing AI-generated quizzes to academic videos on YouTube

Around 550 employees across autonomous vehicle company Motional have been laid off, according to information taken from WARN notice filings and sources at the company.  Earlier this week, TechCrunch reported…

Motional cut about 550 employees, around 40%, in recent restructuring, sources say

The keynote kicks off at 10 a.m. PT on Tuesday and will offer glimpses into the latest versions of Android, Wear OS and Android TV.

Google I/O 2024: Watch all of the AI, Android reveals

Google Play has a new discovery feature for apps, new ways to acquire users, updates to Play Points, and other enhancements to developer-facing tools.

Google Play preps a new full-screen app discovery feature and adds more developer tools

Soon, Android users will be able to drag and drop AI-generated images directly into their Gmail, Google Messages and other apps.

Gemini on Android becomes more capable and works with Gmail, Messages, YouTube and more

Veo can capture different visual and cinematic styles, including shots of landscapes and timelapses, and make edits and adjustments to already-generated footage.

Google Veo, a serious swing at AI-generated video, debuts at Google I/O 2024

In addition to the body of the emails themselves, the feature will also be able to analyze attachments, like PDFs.

Gemini comes to Gmail to summarize, draft emails, and more

The summaries are created based on Gemini’s analysis of insights from Google Maps’ community of more than 300 million contributors.

Google is bringing Gemini capabilities to Google Maps Platform

Google says that over 100,000 developers already tried the service.

Project IDX, Google’s next-gen IDE, is now in open beta

The system effectively listens for “conversation patterns commonly associated with scams” in-real time. 

Google will use Gemini to detect scams during calls

The standard Gemma models were only available in 2 billion and 7 billion parameter versions, making this quite a step up.

Google announces Gemma 2, a 27B-parameter version of its open model, launching in June

This is a great example of a company using generative AI to open its software to more users.

Google TalkBack will use Gemini to describe images for blind people

Google’s Circle to Search feature will now be able to solve more complex problems across psychics and math word problems. 

Circle to Search is now a better homework helper

People can now search using a video they upload combined with a text query to get an AI overview of the answers they need.

Google experiments with using video to search, thanks to Gemini AI

A search results page based on generative AI as its ranking mechanism will have wide-reaching consequences for online publishers.

Google will soon start using GenAI to organize some search results pages

Google has built a custom Gemini model for search to combine real-time information, Google’s ranking, long context and multimodal features.

Google is adding more AI to its search results

At its Google I/O developer conference, Google on Tuesday announced the next generation of its Tensor Processing Units (TPU) AI chips.

Google’s next-gen TPUs promise a 4.7x performance boost

Google is upgrading Gemini, its AI-powered chatbot, with features aimed at making the experience more ambient and contextually useful.

Google’s Gemini updates: How Project Astra is powering some of I/O’s big reveals