Updates with Spaceport America: No more international student competition and still no Virgin Galactic flights

New Mexico’s Spaceport America touts itself as the gateway to space, but after losing out on hosting a major collegiate rocket engineering competition and no launches from Virgin Galactic since June, are operations up in the air?

Spaceport America Executive Director Scott McLaughlin says no. He’s in talks with future tenants and doesn’t anticipate any delays with Virgin Galactic’s plan to resume commercial launches next year.

He admitted he is sad to see the Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition, or IREC, leave Spaceport. The competition attracts student rocketry teams from around the world. Spaceport has hosted IREC since 2017 and even played a role in rebranding the competition as the Spaceport America Cup.

But this year, Spaceport won’t be the venue for the competition; it’ll be in Midland, Texas. The decision was spurred by the need for a larger competition venue and higher flights, McLaughlin said.

“We hate to lose the visibility and the introduction to New Mexico that the students got by being part of the IREC and coming to Spaceport America,” McLaughlin said.

Federal operations played a part in IREC moving away from the Spaceport, as the launch pad uses the restricted airspace of the White Sands Missile Range, McLaughlin said. He explained that the Experimental Sounding Rocket Association, which operates IREC, was looking at flights up to 100,000 feet — meaning “a rocket could conceivably go downwind and land on White Sands Missile Range, as opposed to our property or nearby our property.”

Spaceport has other forms of visibility, like through its anchor tenant Virgin Galactic and having the U.S. Thunderbirds practice there, McLaughlin said.

Not hosting IREC will also probably make Virgin Galactic’s plans for flying twice a week smoother, McLaughlin said.

“That in of itself, might be somewhat incompatible with the IREC because we can’t have rockets launching at the same time we have Virgin Galactic flying passengers to space,” he said.

As for Virgin Galactic’s presence at Spaceport, it’s been pretty quiet — as expected.

The space tourism company in late 2023 announced it planned to scale back and eventually pause flights from Spaceport, after major net losses and layoffs that year.

Sierra County resident Dan Warren isn’t very confident in Virgin Galactic’s operations at Spaceport, especially when it comes to how much it supports the local economy. He told the Journal despite thousands of space tourists being promised, only a couple dozen have actually launched from Spaceport, “and now operations have been paused for at least another year and probably two years or more.”

“As a long-time resident of Sierra County, I’m disappointed that the promised space tourism from 20 years ago has never come to fruition,” he said.

Warren brought up a recent Motley Fool article questioning if it would be more financially promising for Virgin Galactic to fly cargo, like research projects, instead of passengers. The space company’s stock has been on a downward spiral for years, sitting at a low of around $4.04 on Wednesday.

Virgin Galactic didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.

But McLaughlin said everything is on track for Virgin Galactic to come back to Spaceport sometime later this year. The company has said it’ll resume commercial flights in 2026 with its new Delta class ships.

Plans are still in the works at Spaceport with tenants other than Virgin Galactic. McLaughlin said he’s in talks with future tenants, though he couldn’t name specific companies due to nondisclosure agreements.

Not having IREC could be a benefit to some potential tenants, like one company thinking about installations at the Vertical Launch Area that didn’t want student rocket competition activity that close by, McLaughlin said.

Spaceport is also working on a 40-year lease with the State Land Office. McLaughlin said some tenants at Spaceport’s horizontal launch area want to sign long-term agreements. The current base lease has another seven or eight years on it, he added.

He said Virgin Galactic is one of the tenants looking for a longer lease of at least 20 years.

“We’re staying busy,” McLaughlin said. “We have lots of customers, so we’re staying busy trying to get ready for Virgin Galactic coming back sometime later this year.”

Editor's note 2/19/25 9 a.m.: This article has been updated to correctly reflected the height IREC's flights could reach.