AMSTERDAM - In a move that screams “we’re not wasting a perfectly good prototype,” Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity spaceplane has been dusted off and sent back into the skies above New Mexico. The vehicle performed a glide flight on May 27 after being released from its mothership Eve over Spaceport America, gliding to a runway landing like a very expensive paper airplane.
This was Unity’s first flight since its last commercial suborbital jaunt in June 2024. Virgin Galactic had previously shelved the spaceplane to focus on its shiny new spacecraft, creatively named SpaceShip, which is still in development. Now Unity is back, not for glory, but for pilot training - because nothing prepares you for flying a new spaceship like flying an old one.
The company plans to use Unity’s glide characteristics as a “real-world proxy” for SpaceShip, according to Mike Moses, Virgin Galactic’s spaceline president. “Using a proven vehicle in this way prepares our pilots and operations teams to move through flight testing for our new spaceship more efficiently and with greater confidence than simulator training alone could provide,” he said, in a statement that basically translates to: “We already paid for this thing, might as well use it.”
During a May 14 earnings call, CEO Michael Colglazier confirmed that Unity’s glide flights are part of preparations for SpaceShip test flights, which are slated to begin in the third quarter. Commercial suborbital flights are expected to start before the end of the year - a timeline that sounds ambitious given that Unity took years to reach its commercial debut in 2021. But hey, practice makes perfect, or at least makes for good PR.