The last, best hope for space tourism just rolled onto a runway in Arizona
It has been nearly a year since any space tourism flights occurred.
The private space tourism industry, once considered a bright prospect, appears to be hitting a significant roadblock as of late. Once brimming with excitement, the prospects of Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic taking civilian tourists to the stars have dimmed considerably. As of now, nearly a full year has passed since Blue Origin's New Shepard spacecraft embarked on its final mission in January.
This program, which had hoped to make space travel accessible to the general public, has since been put on hold. Blue Origin has redirected its attention towards other projects, such as the development of the New Glenn rocket and the New Moon lander.
Similarly, SpaceX, the company behind the Dragon spacecraft, has also ceased its free-flyer missions. The last mission with a non-government astronaut, the Fram2, was conducted in April 2025. It seems likely that all remaining non-NASA missions to space stations will have at least one government astronaut on board, indicating a shift in the focus of space tourism. The retirement of Dragon seems imminent, post-dating SpaceX's plans for the Starship, which currently have no credible timeline for human spaceflight from Earth.
Virgin Galactic, another player in the space tourism arena, last conducted a suborbital mission with the VSS Unity spacecraft over two years ago, in June 2024. This leaves the United States without a space tourism mission for nearly a year, leaving the industry in a state of stagnation.
Written by urgent.news from Ars Technica's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
