This is an archive article published on July 7, 2022

Boeing’s Aurora to build Virgin Galactic spaceship carrier plane

Boeing subsidiary Aurora Flight Science will build Virgin Galactic's new twin-fuselage carrier plane that will ferry its next-generation spaceship toward space.

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo at Spaceport America in New Mexico. (Image credit: Virgin Galactic)

1 min readWashingtonJul 7, 2022 07:51 PM IST First published on: Jul 7, 2022 at 03:40 PM IST

Virgin Galactic inked an agreement with Boeing subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences to build the company’s new twin-fuselage carrier plane that will ferry its next-generation spaceship toward space, the companies announced on Wednesday.

Virgin Galactic, the space tourism firm founded by billionaire businessman Richard Branson, has been building a more durable, mass-producable successor to its flagship SpaceShipTwo spaceplane, which drops from the underbelly of a carrier plane before rocketing to the edge of space for a few minutes.

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Aurora, Boeing’s aeronautics and aviation research unit, will build two new carrier planes that will support the SpaceShipTwo craft and its successor, which Virgin Galactic calls Delta-class vehicles.