Virgin Galactic has struck a new deal with the Air Force to evaluate whether sensors could be integrated into its next-generation spaceship to study a slice of sky that almost nobody has ever closely measured. The company announced a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with the Air Force Research Laboratory's Space Warfare Directorate, based at Kirtland Air Force Base, aimed at tracking space weather from suborbital altitudes above New Mexico.
The agreement lets researchers from AFRL and Virgin Galactic evaluate integrating sensor systems into the company's next-generation spaceship, according to lcsun-news.com. The vehicle would collect space-weather data while in flight, with the work targeting the mesosphere and lower thermosphere — a layer scientists have long struggled to observe directly. The research is set to run over a 24-month period, and the goal is to help researchers understand how space weather affects satellites and other orbital structures, per the same report also cited by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
How the Spaceship Gets There
Virgin Galactic's spaceship launches from an aircraft mothership, and once it reaches altitude and is released from that launch platform, it ignites its own rocket motor to reach suborbital space, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine. The vehicle can carry up to six passengers, and the company plans to launch and land its spaceships from Spaceport America in New Mexico.
Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said the company was pleased to support the Air Force Research Lab in gathering data with its spacecraft, and added that the agreement would expand and identify opportunities for Virgin Galactic's growing fleet. Mike Moses, president of Virgin Galactic, said the mesosphere and lower thermosphere are the least researched part of the planet and contain details relevant to climate modeling and orbital tracking.
A Notoriously Hard Layer to Study
Scientists have described this stretch of sky as one of the least explored and understood regions of Earth's atmosphere, according to NASA's TIMED mission page. NASA notes that interactions in this part of the atmosphere create highly variable space weather effects that can impact communications and navigation signals, satellite orbits, and even create currents in Earth's crust that affect ground infrastructure, according to science.nasa.gov.
Compounding the challenge, Eos reports that no new satellite missions or instruments are currently planned or under development to extend existing observations of the mesosphere and lower thermosphere. The agreement would assess whether a suborbital research platform could collect data in that altitude band.
A Fleet Built for Frequent Flights
Virgin Galactic's next-generation Spaceships are designed to fly up to twice a week, and the company has said it is planning for around 125 flights a year with its initial fleet. The vehicles are expected to have a lifetime of more than 500 missions, according to a statement on the company's own site. Air & Space Forces Magazine reports the company expects to reach at least 10 SpaceShip flights per month by summer 2027 once a second vehicle enters service, and that flight testing in New Mexico was expected to begin this month.
Virgin Galactic has previously said it expected glide tests of its first next-generation Spaceship in the third quarter of 2026, with rocket-powered test flights to space following in the fourth quarter. Commercial timelines remain unsettled: Air & Space Forces Magazine reports the SpaceShip is scheduled for its first commercial flight in February 2027, while SpaceNews reported in May that company officials said Virgin Galactic remained on track, technically and financially, to start commercial flights before the end of 2026. The two timelines have not been reconciled publicly.
This is not the company's first research tie-up tied to its spacecraft. Virgin Galactic signed a similar agreement with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in December 2025 to assess sensor systems aboard its launch vehicle and to develop high-altitude image-capture capabilities, according to leonarddavid.com. The AFRL partnership will assess whether Virgin Galactic's spaceplane can serve as a platform for government-backed research, with the aim of better understanding space weather's effects on satellites and orbital infrastructure.
