SpaceShipTwo

The Scaled Composites Model 339 SpaceShipTwo (SS2) is a retired air-launched suborbitalspaceplane type designed for space tourism. It was manufactured by The Spaceship Company, a California-based company owned by Virgin Galactic.

SpaceShipTwo was carried to its launch altitude by a Scaled Composites White Knight Two, before being released to fly on into the upper atmosphere powered by its rocket engine. It then glided back to Earth and performed a conventional runway landing. The spaceship was officially unveiled to the public on 7 December 2009 at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. On 29 April 2013, after nearly three years of unpowered testing, the first SS2 constructed successfully performed its first powered test flight.

Virgin Galactic planned to operate a fleet of five SpaceShipTwo spaceplanes in a private passenger-carrying service and took bookings for some time, with a suborbital flight carrying a ticket price of US$250,000 in 2015. The spaceplane was also used to carry scientific payloads for NASA and other organizations.

On 31 October 2014, during a test flight, the first SpaceShipTwo VSS Enterprisebroke up in flight and crashed in the Mojave Desert. An investigation found that the craft's descent device deployed too early. Co-pilot Michael Alsbury was killed, pilot Peter Siebold was seriously injured after parachuting; he is the only person to survive a spacecraft disintegration.

The second SpaceShipTwo spacecraft, VSS Unity, was unveiled on 19 February 2016. The vehicle underwent flight testing 2016–2023. Its first flight to space (above 50 miles altitude), VSS Unity VP03, took place on 13 December 2018. The first operational flight of Unity (defined as the first flight flying passengers that were not Virgin Galactic employees) was Galactic 01 on 29 June 2023. The final flight of Unity was Galactic 07 on 8 June 2024.