Virgin Galactic is a company within Richard Branson's Virgin Group which plans to provide suborbital spaceflights to space tourists, suborbital launches for space science missions, and orbital launches of small satellites. Further in the future, Virgin Galactic hopes to offer orbital human spaceflights as well. Virgin Galactic's spacecraft is launched from a large aeroplane, giving the spacecraft more initial speed and altitude than if it were launched from the ground.

The White Knight Two is a special aeroplane that functions as the mother ship and launch-platform for the spacecraft SpaceShipTwo. The mother ship is a large fixed-wing aircraft with two hulls linked together by a central wing.

Sir Richard Branson unveiled the rocket plane on December 7, 2009. SpaceShipTwo was presented to the world at the Mojave Desert in California. The vehicle underwent testing during the following 18 months before being allowed to take ticketed individuals on short-hop trips just above the atmosphere. Sir Richard Branson, who heads the Virgin Group, intends to run the first flights out of New Mexico before extending operations around the globe. Built from lightweight carbon composite materials and powered by a hybrid rocket motor, SS2 is based on the Ansari X PRIZE-winning SpaceShipOne concept - a rocket plane that is lifted initially by a carrier vehicle before blasting skywards. SS1 became the world's first private spaceship with a series of high-altitude flights in 2004.

Its successor is twice as large, measuring 18 m (60 ft) in length. Whereas SpaceShipOne only had a single pilot (and the ballast equivalent of two passengers), SS2 will have a crew of two and room for six passengers. More than 400 people were reported to have signed up for a flight as of early 2011, at a ticket price of $200,000 per person with a $20,000 deposit. The ticket price was raised to $250,000 in early May 2013, and is slated to remain at that price until at least 1,000 passengers have signed up. It was announced on June 17, 2013 that the 600th ticket had been sold to fly with Virgin Galactic, and that 640 had signed up by August 2013. Tickets are available from more than 140 "space agents" worldwide. Passengers who have already submitted their deposit include Stephen Hawking, Tom Hanks, Ashton Kutcher, Katy Perry, Brad Pitt, and Angelina Jolie. Each passenger will experience approximately six minutes of weightlessness during what will be a two-hour end-to-end flight. Many of those future "astronauts" have attended the VIP unveiling at the Mojave Air and Spaceport. Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson christened the spaceliner Virgin SpaceShip (VSS) Enterprise.

The New Mexico authorities are investing almost $200m (£121m) in a purpose-built facility in Sierra County, New Mexico, Spaceport America. It will have a 3,000 m (10,000 ft) runway and a space-age terminal and hangar building designed by Foster and Partners. Sir Richard's Virgin Galactic enterprise will have competitors, but he is almost certain to be the first to market, barring any problems arising in the test campaign.SpaceShipTwo's carrier plane is called WhiteKnightTwo. It was finished in 2008, and has already begun its own trials.

It is planned that the SpaceShipTwo spacecraft will be robust and affordable enough to take paying passengers. The craft is expected to accommodate six passengers and two pilots. Its planned trajectory will make it a suborbital journey with a short period of weightlessness. SpaceShipTwo will be carried to about 16 kilometers, or 52000 ft, by a carrier aircraft, White Knight II. At the point where the carrier aircraft reaches its maximum height, the SpaceShipTwo vehicle will separate and continue to over 100 km (the Kármán line, a common definition of where "space" begins). The time from liftoff of the White Knight booster carrying SpaceShipTwo until the touchdown of the spacecraft after the suborbital flight will be about 2.5 hours. The suborbital flight itself will only be a small fraction of that time. The weightlessness will last approximately 6 minutes. Passengers will be able to release themselves from their seats during these 6 minutes and float around the cabin.

In addition to the suborbital passenger business, Virgin Galactic will market SpaceShipTwo for suborbital space science missions and market White Knight Two for "small satellite" launch services. It had planned to initiate RFPs for the satellite business in early 2010, but flights had not materialized as of 2012.

SpaceShipTwo flies to a height of 110 km, going beyond the defined boundary of space (100 km) and lengthening the experience of weightlessness [for its passengers]. The spacecraft reaches a top speed of 4000 km/h (2485 mph), faster than current fighter jets. It has double the crew (2) and can carry three times the number of passengers (6) of its predecessor. In honor of the science fiction series Star Trek, the first two ships are named after the fictional starships Enterprise and Voyager. To reenter the atmosphere, SpaceShipTwo folds its wings up and then returns them to their original position for an unpowered descent flight back onto the runway. The craft has a very limited cross-range capability, and until other planned spaceports are built worldwide, it has to land in the area where it started. Further spaceports are planned in Abu Dhabi and elsewhere, with the intention that the spaceline will have a worldwide availability and commodity in the future.

LauncherOne is an orbital launch vehicle that was publicly announced by Virgin Galactic in July 2012. It is designed to launch "smallsat" payloads of 100 kilograms (220 lb) into Earth orbit, with launches projected to begin in 2016. Several commercial customers have already contracted for launches, including GeoOptics, Skybox Imaging, Spaceflight Services, and Planetary Resources. Both Surrey Satellite Technology and Sierra Nevada Space Systems are developing satellite buses "optimized to the design of LauncherOne."

In October 2012, Virgin announced that LauncherOne could place 200 kg (440 lb) in Sun-synchronous orbit. Virgin plans to market the 100 kg (220 lb) payload delivery to low-Earth orbit (LEO) for under US$10,000,000 per mission, while the maximum payload for LEO missions is 230 kg (500 lb).

Virgin Galactic has been working on the LauncherOne concept since at least late 2008, and the technical specifications were first described in some detail in late 2009. The LauncherOne configuration is proposed to be an expendable, two-stage, liquid-fueled rocket air-launched from a White Knight Two. This would make it a similar configuration to that used by Orbital Sciences' Pegasus, or a smaller version of the StratoLaunch.

The Spaceship Company (TSC) is a new aerospace production company founded by Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group and Scaled Composites. It is building a fleet of commercial spaceships and launch aircraft with the intention of making widespread space travel a reality. TSC’s initial launch customer is Virgin Galactic, which has contracted to purchase five SpaceShipTwos and two WhiteKnightTwos. To meet Virgin Galactic’s requirements, TSC has contracted Scaled Composites to develop and build prototypes of WK2 and SS2, of which TSC started full-scale production in 2008.

Virgin Galactic acquired 100% ownership of TSC in 2012 by acquiring the 30% stake still owned by Scaled Composites.