Space company Virgin Galactic Holdings is postponing its commercial space service until the fourth quarter of 2022 and will not conduct another planned test flight this year.
Last September 2, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had prohibited Virgin Galactic from flying its SpaceShipTwo before a report on the flight of the Virgin Galactic rocket plane that took British billionaire Richard Branson to the edge of space was complete.
Branson was one of six Virgin Galactic employees who took part in the flight in July and shot more than 50 miles into space.
On September 29, the FAA discontinued its investigation into Virgin Galactic Unity 22’s July 11 launch mishap, which deviated from its assigned airspace on descent, and lifted a grounding order it had implemented earlier.
Virgin Galactic had said it was planning another SpaceShipTwo flight from New Mexico, Unity 23, subject to technical problems and weather, and the company expected to “open its flight window for Unity 23 is towards the middle of October.”