The lead Spaceship\u2019s first commercial spaceflight is now expected in early Q2 2027, and the second Spaceship is expected to begin commercial spaceflight operations in late Q2\/early Q3 2027. The updated timeline reflects additional time for completing avionics software integration and validation, which uses an exhaustive testing process. That testing will conclude at Spaceport America as the lead Spaceship is readied for its flight test series.<\/p>\n
Virgin Galactic had previously delayed<\/a> its next commercial spaceflight to February 2027, rather than late 2026. It\u2019s now been over two years since Virgin Galactic\u2019s last commercial spaceflight<\/a> in June 2024, when it retired its VSS Unity spacecraft. Apeiron is leaving Virgin Galactic\u2019s Mesa, Arizona Spaceship Factory on Wednesday onboard a captive-carry flight with its Eve launch vehicle, heading to Spaceport America in New Mexico, where Virgin Galactic says its \u201cengineering team plans to complete avionics software validation before beginning flight tests.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The lead Spaceship\u2019s first commercial spaceflight is now expected in early Q2 2027, and the second Spaceship is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659762,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[85,46,43,141,145,177467],"class_list":["post-659761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news","tag-science","tag-space","tag-virgin-galactic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}