Virgin Galactic building two new motherships

American spaceflight company, Virgin Galactic yesterday found a partner to help it build two new motherships. The company is working with Auro Flight Sciences, a Boeing company to design and build its next-gen motherships.

Let's go! 🚀🚀 https://t.co/rgP4U8gAII

— Virgin Galactic (@virgingalactic) July 6, 2022

Virgin Galactic’s motherships are responsible for carrying spaceships to their release altitude of about 50,000 feet. The new motherships are likely to support 400 flights per year.

“The first new mothership is expected to enter service in 2025. By that time, Virgin Galactic’s commercial spaceflight business — carrying well-heeled customers on a 90-minute journey to micro-gravity and back — should be well underway. The company says its commercial missions are expected to start in the first quarter of 2023,” a source according to ZDNet.

“We expect to begin space flight later this year with commercial launch in the first quarter of 2023,” Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said as per investors.virgingalactic.com.

“We are seeing strong uptake across our product offerings. Our future astronaut community stands at approximately 800 reservations. The design work for the next generation of our spaceflight system is well underway, and we are making progress in establishing the infrastructure to scale our business,” he further said.