Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo
The Spaceplane
“The only spaceship a spotter can catch.”
Scaled Composites (The Spaceship Company) · private
Built by Scaled Composites and flown by Virgin Galactic, SpaceShipTwo rides to 45,000 feet under the WhiteKnightTwo mothership, drops, and lights a hybrid rocket motor for about a minute: Mach 3, straight up, past the edge of space. Then the tail booms feather like a shuttlecock and it falls back as a glider. Two were built. Unity carried Richard Branson to space in 2021 and flew paying passengers until June 2024; since May 2026 she has been back in the air on glide flights, training the pilots of the next ships.
If you see one on your map, it is gliding: after the mothership lets go, the spaceplane spends a few minutes descending with no engine at all, then it is on the runway. That is why it seems to vanish.
Short, fat fuselage with a row of round windows, stubby wings, and two tall tail booms. It only ever appears right after the twin-fuselage mothership releases it, high over Spaceport America, New Mexico. Catch the mothership first; the spaceship follows.
One might be overhead right now.
Bogey turns the The Spaceplane from a dot in the sky into a card in your logbook.
