Virgin Galactic will wrap up its suborbital spaceflight program this year with a mission in early November from the team that has long been an advocate of suborbital exploration. On October 18, the company announced that the next flight of its VSS Unity suborbital spaceplane, Galactic 05, is scheduled to launch on November 2 from Spaceport America in New Mexico. This will be the company’s fifth commercial flight this year and Unity’s sixth since the end of May.

Galactic 05 is described by the company as a research flight, like the Galactic 01 mission in June. Its crew will include two explorers named Alan Stern and Kelly Gerardi. The company identifies the third customer only as a French-Italian private astronaut.

Stern, vice president for space sciences at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), will evaluate a harness used to collect biomedical data and test a mock-up of an astronomical camera planned for a future suborbital flight. Gerardi, from the International Institute of Astronautics (IIAS), a research and education organization, will test the biomonitoring device and collect other biomedical data while performing a hydrodynamics experiment.

Stern has been a leading proponent of using commercial suborbital vehicles, such as Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, to conduct research faster and more cheaply than alternative platforms, giving scientists minute access to microgravity and other aspects of the space environment. This interest includes hosting a series of conferences on commercial suborbital research since 2010.

In 2020, Stern was the first scientist awarded by NASA through the agency’s Flight Opportunities program, allowing him to board a commercial suborbital vehicle to conduct research. However, this flight is funded by SwRI and will serve as training for a future NASA-funded mission.

“What sets this flight apart from others and likely represents a new type of space activity is that, most importantly, I will be training in space for future NASA-funded space experiments,” Stern said in a statement. “Virgin’s suborbital costs are low enough to make space training in space a real possibility, and it will be a game changer.”

In 2021, IIAS signed an agreement with Virgin Galactic to fly Gerardi, which has been operating with IIAS for several years. “This mission represents the beginning of a new era in space access for the exploration community and the culmination of a lifelong personal dream,” he said in a statement. “I look forward to paving the way for many of our talented researchers to follow by using space as a laboratory for the benefit of humanity.”

The company has touted suborbital exploration as an alternative application for its vehicles compared to space tourism, which is potentially more profitable per location. “We are excited to offer high-quality, reliable access to a wide range of space exploration,” Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said in a company statement. “The information gained from this flight will be used to develop and enhance the research capabilities of our future Delta fleet.”

The mission will be led by Mike Mazzucci and instructor astronaut Colin Bennett, piloted by Kelly Latimer. The company said Galactic 05 will be the last aircraft to carry instructor astronauts, while Galactic 06 and subsequent flights will carry four private customer astronauts. In its August earnings report, Colgalzier said the company would likely replace its astronaut trainer with a fourth customer “as we head into 2024.”

While Galactic 05 will continue Virgin Galactic’s roughly monthly suborbital missions starting in late May, it will also be the last of the year. The company said Galactic 06 will take place in January to give the company time for “normally scheduled annual vehicle inspections.”