Virgin Galactic appoints Enrico Palermo as its chief operating officer

Algernon D'Ammassa
Las Cruces Sun-News

LAS CRUCES - Virgin Galactic, the commercial space travel company and anchor tenant of New Mexico's Spaceport America, has named Enrico Palermo its new chief operating officer. 

Palermo will continue to serve as president of the Spaceship Company, the manufacturer of Virgin Galactic's spacecraft and the carrier airplane from which it launches in mid-air. 

In addition to his 13 years with the Virgin company, Palermo was the first employee at the Spaceship Company, which is based in Mojave, California and, according to a news release, now has over 500 workers on its campus.

The company announced last week that its second spacecraft was structurally complete.

Palermo will be the first COO at Virgin Galactic, which went public last October following a merger with the investment firm Social Capital Hedosophia.

In a statement, Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides said Palermo "has been an inseparable part of our success." 

Enrico Palermo, Virgin Galactic's new Chief Operating Officer as announced on Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2020.

The company aims to launch its first suborbital flights for commercial passengers during 2020 from the spaceport, located in New Mexico's Sierra County. The company is also in a position to shake up future travel on Earth with point-to-point routes at hypersonic speed, which attracted a $20 million investment in the company by Boeing's venture capital arm, Boeing HorizonX Ventures, last year.

The company began moving personnel and operations to the spaceport in 2019, unveiling mission control and passenger facilities at the facility and proceeding with local test flights of the carrier plane, WhiteKnightTwo.

In a statement, Palermo said, "Taking on this new position at an exciting point in the company's history is incredibly important to me and I look forward to making human spaceflight more accessible to all." 

Algernon D'Ammassa can be reached at 575-541-5451, adammassa@lcsun-news.com or @AlgernonWrites on Twitter.

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