Virgin Galactic is inviting the public to name its next spaceship. The company opened a vote on Tuesday for one of four finalist names for the first vehicle in its Delta class, the successor to the SpaceShipTwo line that carried founder Richard Branson and 31 other people on a dozen short suborbital hops. The poll closes August 27.
The four candidates are Horizon, Explorer, Ascend, and Apeiron, the last a term from early Greek philosophy describing the boundless and unlimited. They were chosen from 276 submissions gathered from Virgin Galactic employees and Future Astronauts, the company’s term for customers with reserved seats. Virgin Galactic is framing the vote as a chance for the public to shape a piece of spaceflight history, and it plans to reveal the winning name as part of the ship’s livery debut, the next milestone before the vehicle is delivered to Spaceport America in New Mexico for flight tests.
The vehicle itself, known for now as Delta-1, is further along than the naming process suggests. Virgin Galactic completed its structural assembly earlier this year and towed it from the assembly hangar to a test and launch hangar in Arizona in March. The Delta class is designed around rapid reuse: each ship carries up to six passengers and can fly as many as eight missions per month, roughly twelve times the flight rate SpaceShipTwo achieved. The company says streamlined manufacturing and maintenance underpin the higher cadence.
The commercial timeline has slipped. Flights were originally expected to resume by the end of 2026, but in its second-quarter financial results, released Wednesday, Virgin Galactic said the first ship is now expected to enter commercial service in February 2027. Flight testing is scheduled to begin in October, with a second spaceship planned to join the fleet in March. Tickets currently sell for $750,000 and climbing.
The naming exercise is a familiar ritual for the company. Its first SpaceShipTwo was christened VSS Enterprise, and the second, VSS Unity, carried a recording of Stephen Hawking, who said the company hoped the vehicle would create a new unity and noted that space exploration has been a great unifier across nations. A SpaceShip III prototype, VSS Imagine, was unveiled in 2021 with a mirror-like finish and modular construction, but the line was shelved in 2024 when development shifted to the Delta class, which also ended plans for its sister ship, VSS Inspire.
Virgin Galactic paused its space tourism program after its last civilian flight in June 2024, more than two years ago, to focus on developing the Delta fleet. The public vote gives the company a way to keep its community engaged during the long gap between flights, and it gives future passengers a small stake in a vehicle they may one day ride. Voters must be at least 13 years old.
Sources: Virgin Galactic wants your help naming its new Delta-class SpaceShip (collectSPACE, Aug 12, 2026); Virgin Galactic wants your help in naming its next spacecraft (USA Today, Aug 13, 2026); Virgin Galactic wants your help naming its new Delta class spaceship (Ars Technica, Aug 13, 2026); Name a Virgin Galactic Spaceship. Shape a Piece of Spaceflight History. (Virgin Galactic, Aug 11, 2026)