page_title: Virgin Galactic
section_title: Mothership
hierarchical_section_title: Virgin Galactic / Operational aspects / Aircraft and spacecraft / Mothership
caption_attribution_description: Scaled Composites / Virgin Galactic WhiteKnightTwo "mother ship" VMS Eve at the rollout ceremony.
context_page_description: Virgin Galactic is a British spaceflight company within the Virgin Group. It is developing commercial spacecraft and aims to provide suborbital spaceflights to space tourists and suborbital launches for space science missions. SpaceShipTwo, Virgin Galactic's suborbital spacecraft, is air launched from beneath a carrier airplane known as White Knight Two.
  Virgin Galactic's founder, Richard Branson, had initially suggested that he hoped to see a maiden flight by the end of 2009, but this date was delayed for several years, most seriously by the October 2014 in-flight loss of SpaceShipTwo VSS Enterprise. Branson stated that Virgin Galactic was “in the best position in the world” to provide rocket-powered, point-to-point 3000 mph air travel on Earth. Finally, on 13 December 2018, VSS Unity achieved the project's first suborbital space flight, VSS Unity VP-03, with two pilots, reaching an altitude of 82.7 kilometres, and officially entering outer space by US standards. The project carried three people including a passenger in February 2019 on VSS Unity VF-01, with a member of the team floating within the cabin during a spaceflight that reached 89.9 kilometres.
context_section_description: The White Knight Two is a special aeroplane built as the mother ship and launch-platform for the spacecraft SpaceShipTwo and the unmanned launch vehicle LauncherOne. The mothership is a large fixed-wing aircraft with two hulls linked together by a central wing. Two aircraft are planned – VMS Eve and VMS Spirit of Steve Fossett.
  The LauncherOne system will use a Boeing 747-400 as the mothership. The B747 Cosmic Girl has been acquired for the duties.
caption: White Knight Two on the ground
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