Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc (NYSE:SPCE) has been given permission to carry out a fully crewed flight of its near-space aircraft late next week.
The space tourism company said the flight window for its test flight will open on 25 May for its Unity rocket, enabling a final in-flight assessment before commercial services are intended to begin towards the end of June.
Preparations for the Unity 25 mission will step up with four astronauts – all Virgin Galactic staff – undergoing training for the zero gravity flight from Monday, Virgin Galactic said.
For space fans among the general public, commercial flights will cost at least US$450,000 a time and generate upwards of US$2.7mln per flight.
Space tourism rival Blue Origin, the privately owned company set up by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, has meanwhile completed a handful of crewed spaceflights, the latest from its New Shepard vehicle in June last year, before an uncrewed mission exploded and has been followed by internal investigations since.
The first commercial flight for Virgin Galactic, which has also been busy testing since being forced to delay its maiden commercial flights due to a "potential manufacturing defect" was identified in a component almost a year and a half ago, has been booked by the Italian Air Force for a research mission.
Flights carrying private astronauts and research payloads are expected to follow at a rate of around one a month.
For its suborbital space flights, the VSS Unity rocket is carried to above 40,000 feet (over 12,000 metres) by the VMS Eve launch mothership where it is detached and fires its own rockets to reach its suborbital altitude of around 293,000 feet (51 miles, 89km).
This peak altitude allows the passengers to experience a few minutes of weightlessness, before Unity heads back to Earth to land on a runway at the company's New Mexico base.
There is some dispute over whether this is a flight in 'space' or not, with the US demarcating anything above 50 miles as space, but internationally the measure is 100km or 62 miles, known as the Kármán line.
Bezos' Blue Origin, meanwhile, has been taking its tourists above the line, with its last flight reaching an altitude of 106km but with tickets costing upwards of US$1mln per seat.
For a trip to the International Space Station (altitude 408km), which is being offered by SpaceX and Axiom this month, three space tourists have each reportedly paid US$55mln to join the eight-day mission.