Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Virgin Galactic and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are looking at the feasibility of using the airplane mothership as a carrier platform. (Image credit: Virgin Galactic)

Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic space group is deep into development of its new Delta Class suborbital space planes, with both research and private astronaut flights expected to commence next year.

The company has also been looking at using its mothership aircraft that releases those newly developed space planes at high altitude as a carrier platform for other customers.

To that end, Virgin Galactic is collaborating with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to fly a specific payload via the carrier aircraft.

Optical payload

“The idea is to fly an optical payload on an airplane that can look up for satellites, look down at the ground/sea, and identify things of interest,” explains Benjamin Bahney, a co-founder and the leader of LLNL’s space program.

“The gimbal allows the optic to look up, down, sideways and to track objects without banking the aircraft all over the place,” Bahney told Inside Outer Space. Having optics that work in multiple bands increases detection and characterization capability, he added.

Image credit: Virgin Galactic

Ongoing work

Earlier this year, Virgin Galactic highlighted ongoing work on Delta Class systems and structures, such as wing assembly to be completed during the fourth quarter of this year, as well as the craft’s novel “feather” assembly. The feathering system is utilized when the suborbital vehicle heads back to Earth, making it more stable during the reentry process.

Construction of the Delta Class SpaceShip fuselage is expected to be completed late this year or early 2026, Virgin Galactic has stated.

Final assembly of Delta Class vehicles will take place at Virgin Galactic’s Delta facility near Phoenix, Arizona.

The Delta Class spaceships are being built to be capable of flying eight space missions per month, with twelve times the monthly payload or customer capacity of their original spaceship, VSS Unity.

Purdue-1

Last month, in a joint announcement between Virgin Galactic and Purdue University, the Purdue-1 mission was unveiled.

That flight is expected to lift off in 2027 and will carry a Purdue engineering professor, a graduate student, as well as a Purdue alumni member.

Designed to seat up to six passengers, Virgin Galactic’s next-generation spaceship is customizable and will have one seat removed for this mission to fly the five crew members and allow space for a payload rack to hold research experiments.