Purdue University to fly dedicated suborbital research mission with Virgin Galactic

SYDNEY — Purdue University will conduct a dedicated suborbital research flight with Virgin Galactic in 2027 carrying a professor, student and alumni.

Purdue announced Sept. 23 plans for the “Purdue 1” suborbital flight on Virgin’s next-generation spaceplane. The flight, carrying five people, will be the first dedicated crewed suborbital research mission by a university.

“We have amazing faculty, students and alums, who are going to run experiments, do their research and innovation, while doing teaching and learning, all while they’re in space,” said Mung Chiang, president of Purdue, at the event announcing the mission. “Why should a university be confined to the surly bonds of gravity here on Earth?”

The flight will be led by Steven Collicott, a professor of aerospace engineering at Purdue and a longtime advocate for using commercial suborbital vehicles for research. In 2021, NASA’s Flight Opportunities program awarded him a grant to fly on a future Virgin Galactic flight to study how fluids behave in microgravity.

“What we are talking about here today really is the result of a good idea growing into a better idea and into an even larger, even cooler, astounding commitment,” Collicott said.

Joining him on the flight will be Purdue graduate student Abigail Mizzi, who will also conduct research on the behavior of fluids in microgravity. The university is funding her seat through donations, with a goal of raising $1 million.

The flight “will mark a change in how the aerospace industry community conducts research and space flight for the future, opening the doors for all the next students and researchers to extend beyond their laboratories here on Earth and go into space,” she said.

Also on Purdue 1 will be three Purdue alumni, who will self-fund their seats. One announced at the event is Jason Williamson, senior vice president at engineering company Dunaway. He said he had signed up for a Virgin Galactic program for prospective customers and attended SpaceShipTwo flights at Spaceport America in New Mexico when he learned about the “interwoven connections” between the company and the university.

Purdue said a second, unnamed alumna has signed on to participate, while a third alumni seat remains open.

Virgin’s new spaceplanes, still in development, are designed to carry six passengers. On Purdue 1, the sixth seat will be occupied by research payloads.

“The Purdue 1 mission set for 2027 is exactly what we envisioned when we built our spaceflight system and research platform, putting scientists, engineers and students at the heart of discovery, enabling them to conduct and interact with human-tended experiments in suborbital space,” said Mike Moses, president of spaceline at Virgin Galactic and a Purdue alum. “This mission is proof that space is now an accessible frontier.”

While Purdue 1 will be the first dedicated research flight by a university on a commercial crewed suborbital vehicle, it will not be the first time researchers have flown such missions. Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute and Kellie Gerardi of the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences conducted research on a Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo flight in 2023. Rob Ferl of the University of Florida performed experiments on a Blue Origin New Shepard mission in 2024.

Those researchers described the flights as intense, with only a few minutes of microgravity to carry out their investigations, even as others on board enjoyed weightlessness and the view.

“I think the science leading the way in science is going to be pretty intensely exciting, and things happen pretty quick,” Collicott said of his plans for the flight, comparing it to the final seconds of a basketball game.

“Working with the liquids, there’s going to be periods where the liquid motion needs to settle out and decay,” he said. “That’s the only chance I’ll get to look out the windows. I look forward to that.”