Virgin Galactic Plans To Become First Publicly Traded Spaceflight Company

Virgin Galactic, the space tourism company founded by billionaire Richard Branson, is preparing to enter the stock market by the end of 2019, through a merger with an existing company.

It would be the first spaceflight company to be publicly owned; Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX are both privately held.

Virgin Galactic was founded in 2004 and experienced a significant setback in 2014 when a test flight fatally crashed. But within the past year, the company has successfully taken two crewed spaceflights.