Virgin Galactic has delayed its planned flight of Virgin SpaceShip Unity from Spaceport America this week. CEO Michael Colglazier cited cited guidance from the New Mexico Department of Health during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as reason for the need to reschedule.
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Virgin Galactic is leaning all the way in on plans to build out future spaceflight and advanced flight services as a business. The company tapped a Disney executive as CEO and unveiled its spacecraft interior design in July. Now Virgin Galactic is teasing a future high-speed aircraft design in partnership with Rolls-Royce.
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From a successful test flight to a new NASA agreement, the first five days in May have been jam-packed for Virgin Galactic.
Now add its first-quarter earnings results (and second-ever investor call) to the list.
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Virgin Galactic has scheduled a quarterly conference call to discuss Q1 2020 financial results. The call is set to for 5 p.m. EDT on May 5.
The publicly traded space company used its previous (and first-ever) quarterly conference call as an opportunity to announce its new “One Small Step” program.
Virgin Galactic has been accepting refundable $1000 registration fees for preparing customers for spaceflight since late February so we can expect an update on the program.
The company last shared that its 2020 goal was to send Richard Branson to space as a demonstration of its service. Hopefully we can learn how coronavirus has affected that goal since COVID-19’s spread across the United States in March.
Speaking of the novel coronavirus, Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides published a detailed blog post today that describes how the company is aiding in the fight against the pandemic.
Part of the effort includes a new live educational series on YouTube while schools in the U.S. are closed as an effort to fight the coronavirus spread.
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Turns out investment bank Morgan Stanley has a dedicated Space Team, and they’re awfully jazzed about the impact NASA’s Artemis Moon mission is having on public and investor support in the companies like Virgin Galactic.
The Morgan Stanley Space Team advises that “increased news flow around space tourism could catalyze itself in increasing awareness to a larger breadth of investors being interested in Virgin Galactic,” specifically citing the firm for being the only pure-play publicly traded space tourism company.
Virgin Galactic recently shared its first full year of earnings results as a publicly traded company and made steps toward making space tourism possible. SpaceX similarly has ambitions to build a business out of taking private citizens to space for longer durations than Blue Origin.
NASA’s Artemis mission to put the first woman and next man on the Moon by 2024 is credited for driving public awareness of space activity, and the investment firm believes consumers will associate Virgin Galactic with human spaceflight innovation “as the business shifts from a niche experience catering to high net worth individuals to investing in more applications in space.”
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Two pieces of breaking news from Virgin Galactic.
First, Virgin Galactic says 7,957 registrations of interest in flight reservations have been made as of February 23, 2020. That’s up 124% from 3,557 as of September 30, 2019.
Second, a new “One Small Step” program will allow prospective flyers to pay a $1,000 refundable deposit to jump ahead of the queue when spaceflight sales resume. The “One Giant Leap” process will come later to confirm a “spaceflight reservation and gain full membership to the thriving Virgin Galactic Future Astronaut Community” after full payments are made.
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