Space tourism company Virgin Galactic announced today that it will resume space flights with a mission at the end of May involving four of its employees, with commercial flights starting at the end of June.

After years of waiting, the Unity 25 mission will take place “at the end of May”, announced the company of the British Richard Branson, who took part in the last flight, about two years ago (July 2021). Since then, the company has made modifications to its carrier aircraft and spacecraft to improve the performance of their engines and their ability to fly more often.

Unity 25 will be “the last evaluation of the space system and the astronaut experience before commercial flights resume in late June,” the company added. This will be the fifth flight to reach space – as defined by the US military, at a height of 80 kilometers above the Earth’s surface. The journey in zero gravity takes only a few minutes: the huge carrier aircraft takes off from a classic airport runway, then, after reaching a certain height, launches the spacecraft that looks like a large private jet. The spacecraft then revs its engines until it exceeds 50 miles (80 km) and then descends smoothly to land on the same runway.

The flights are from Spaceport America, in the New Mexico desert.

The passengers on Unity 25 will be two men and two women: Beth Moses (participant in both previous flights), Jamila Gilbert, Chris Huey and Lew Mays, who trained NASA astronauts for years. Two pilots will be at the helm of the aircraft and two more in the spacecraft.

The first commercial flight, called Galactic 01, will carry members of the Italian Air Force.

The development of Virgin Galactic’s space program has been significantly delayed, mainly due to an accident in 2014 in which a pilot was killed. The company has already presold 800 tickets for the space: 600 of them were sold between 2005-14, priced between $200,000-250,000. The rest were sold more recently and fetched up to $450,000 each.

Virgin Galactic is competing with Blue Origin, billionaire Jeff Bezos’ company, which has already sent 32 “tourists” into space. However, after an accident in 2022, during an unmanned flight, her rocket is grounded. Blue Origin promised in May that it would resume spaceflight “soon.”