Virgin Galactic is ready to lead the space-tourism pack.

Richard Branson’s company is the only one left helping wealthy tourists explore the outer reaches of our atmosphere via suborbital flight—with its only competitor bowing out recently, with Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin announcing in January it would be stopped its space tourism endeavors. And Virgin Galactic and its Delta spacecraft will get their chance in the spotlight later this year, when the aircraft is set to embark on its first flight by the end of 2026.

“The space launch later this year is going to be really important, particularly now that Blue Origin seems to have bowed out of putting people into space,” Branson said via livestream to a space conference in London, according to Bloomberg. “We need to fill that gap.”

The six-person Delta spacecraft, with its flashy purple livery, had undergone an upgrade back in 2025, making it easier to have a faster turnaround between trips. Branson echoed that sentiment at the conference, saying that the spacecraft could launch, come back to Earth, and hit the skies once more with two days’ time: “We’re building them now more like you’d build an airplane,” the billionaire explained.

Virgin Galactic had previously sold 700 seats aboard Delta, each to the tune of around $600,000. (Bids for a seat about Blue Origin had, at one point, climbed to nearly $3 million.) Now, the company is also planning to reopen ticket sales, which will cause a decrease in that sky-high price tag over time, Bloomberg reported.

Virgin Galactic is no stranger to the new frontier: The company completed its first commercial space flight, with four passengers aboard the VSS Unity, back in June 2023. Since that 90-minute endeavor, the brand has also completed 12 other suborbital flights, though it had since paused those missions to focus on the creation of Delta. And now it seems 2026 is the time for the spacecraft to shine; after all, it’s operating the only commercial flight heading toward the cosmos—for now, at least.

After all, that was once a big goal of the billionaire space race, with everyone from Branson to Bezos to Elon Musk attempting to shuffle folks into the cosmos, whether it be for scientific missions or just for fun. Now, the face-off has pivoted. After years of focusing on building a colony on Mars, Musk has since switched to creating a “self-growing” city on the moon, while Bezos also has his eyes set on our closest neighbor in the galaxy, The Wall Street Journal reported, turning the moon into a turf war of the uber-rich. That leaves plenty of room in the skies for Virgin Galactic’s Delta, though.