Suborbital flight testing

Virgin Galactic prepares Apeiron for tests at Spaceport America

The company reported an October 28 ferry arrival aboard Eve; avionics work and successful flight testing precede its early second-quarter 2027 commercial target.

02 November 2026 at 9:49 am ISTBy Industry Desk2 min read

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Archival identifying image: the Gateway terminal at Spaceport America, New Mexico, photographed on August 18, 2014. This is the operating base named in the Apeiron arrival announcement, not a photograph of that ferry flight. Photo: Land Rover MENA / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/); unchanged.

Early Q2 2027Company’s conditional commercial target

Virgin Galactic plans to complete avionics software integration and validation at Spaceport America after bringing its lead next-generation spaceship, Apeiron, to the New Mexico base on October 28. The company’s arrival announcement puts that engineering work alongside preparations for flight testing, with customer flights dependent on a successful test programme.

The transfer flight carried Apeiron attached beneath Eve, Virgin Galactic’s carrier aircraft, according to the announcement. The company reported departure from Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport in Arizona at 10:29 a.m. Mountain Standard Time and arrival at Spaceport America at 12:59 p.m. Mountain Daylight Time that day.

The ferry arrival does not establish that Apeiron has completed its own flight tests. Virgin Galactic’s release identifies glide flights and rocket-powered flights within the planned test programme, but does not report their completion. It gives no date for the first such flight.

The company now expects Apeiron’s commercial spaceflights to begin in the early part of the second quarter of 2027, after successful testing. That is later than the February 2027 target reported by Courtney Albon in Air & Space Forces Magazine on October 14. Both dates are schedule expectations, rather than completed operating milestones.

Virgin Galactic also reported that assembly of a static test article and a second spaceship was underway at its Mesa factory, while teams prepared the rocket-motor assembly line. The company expects the second ship to begin commercial operations in the late second quarter or early third quarter of 2027.

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