The stock of space tourism company Virgin Galactic (NYSE:SPCE) was up 27% to $55 U.S. per share in pre-market trading Friday (July 2) after the company announced that it will launch its founder, Sir Richard Branson, into orbit on July 11.
Branson is aiming to beat fellow billionaire, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos, into space. Bezos has said that he plans to launch into space with his company, Blue Origin, on July 20.
The July 11 launch will be Virgin Galactic’s fourth test spaceflight to date and its first mission with a crew of four on board. The company launched its most recent spaceflight on May 22 with just two pilots.
Alongside Branson will be three Virgin Galactic mission specialists who will fly the company’s VSS Unity spacecraft. Virgin Galactic said it will livestream the spaceflight for the first time, a feed that will be available on Twitter, (NYSE:TWTR) YouTube and Facebook (NASDAQ:FB).
On June 25, the company announced that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) granted it a license to fly passengers on future spaceflights, and Virgin is targeting early 2022 to begin flying paying passengers into orbit.
Branson founded Virgin Galactic in 2004 to build a space tourism business. The company competes only with Bezos’ Blue Origin in the realm of suborbital space tourism, as Elon Musk’s SpaceX carries passengers on longer trips into orbit, such as to the International Space Station.
In June, Bezos announced that he would fly on Blue Origin’s first passenger flight of its New Shepard rocket. Bezos is scheduled to launch on July 20 and will fly alongside his brother as well as the winner of a $28 million public auction and legendary aerospace pioneer Wally Funk.
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