5 Planes That Can Fly in Space (and How They Do It)

For most of us, the line between "airplane" and "spacecraft" feels pretty clear. Planes have wings and need air. Spacecraft have rockets and live above the sky. But there's a small, strange group of flying machines that blur that line in the most exciting way possible. They take off, they fly, and at some point, they leave the atmosphere behind.

These are not space capsules. They are real aircraft with wings, pilots, and control surfaces. Some of them helped train the first American astronauts. Others are flying paying tourists right now. A few were never officially called "spaceplanes" at all, but they climbed so high they basically grazed the void.

The truth is, planes that can fly in space are rarer than people think, and the ones that exist are wildly different from each other. The fastest jet on Earth and the experimental rocket plane that crossed into space play by completely different rules of physics.

Key Takeaways

A plane can "fly in space" if it crosses one of two recognized space boundaries: the U.S. Air Force's 50-mile line or the international Kármán line at about 62 miles up. Only a small number of aircraft have ever done it, and they all use rocket power, ballistic climbs, or both to get there. Winged flight in the traditional sense ends long before space begins, so these aircraft are part plane, part spacecraft.

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What "Flying in Space" Actually Means

Before we get to the aircraft, it helps to settle one big question. Where does space actually start? The answer is a little fuzzier than you might expect.

There isn't one global law that draws the line. Instead, two definitions are used most often:

• The Kármán line: Sits at about 100 kilometers, or roughly 62 miles, above sea level. The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), an international record-keeping body for aeronautics, defines the Kármán line as the space boundary, at an altitude of 62 miles (100 km).
• The U.S. boundary: The U.S. military, the Federal Aviation Administration, and NASA all set the boundary of space at 50 miles (80 km) above ground.

That 12-mile gap matters. A pilot can cross one line and still fall short of the other. It's the reason different agencies sometimes disagree on calling a flight "spaceflight" or not.

Good to Know: A test flight can earn a pilot U.S. astronaut wings without crossing the Kármán line. That's exactly what happened to several Virgin Galactic and X-15 pilots over the years.

The Kármán Line vs. the U.S. Definition

The Kármán line was named after aerospace engineer Theodore von Kármán. The idea behind it is simple. Above a certain altitude, the air is so thin that a winged aircraft would have to fly faster than orbital speed to stay aloft using lift alone. At that point, you're basically a spacecraft, not a plane.

But the line is not a hard physical wall. There's a quiet debate among astrophysicists arguing that 80 kilometers might actually be a better number than 100 based on the physics of where aerodynamic forces stop mattering. For now, both 50 miles and 62 miles are widely accepted, depending on who's keeping score.

Suborbital vs. Orbital Flight

This part trips up a lot of people. Crossing into space and staying in space are two very different things.

• Suborbital flight means going up high enough to reach space, then coming straight back down. You're in space for a few minutes at most.
• Orbital flight means going fast enough sideways to keep falling around the Earth without hitting it. That takes a massive amount of energy compared to a suborbital hop.

Getting into orbit takes about 32 times the energy of a suborbital flight. That's why most of the planes on this list are suborbital. Only one of them, the Space Shuttle, actually flew in orbit.

How a Plane Can Reach Space

A normal jet engine works by sucking in air, mixing it with fuel, and burning it. Take away the air and the engine just stops. Most commercial jets cruise around 35,000 to 40,000 feet because the math works out best for them at those altitudes.

To get higher, an aircraft needs a few tricks:

• Rocket engines that carry their own oxidizer and don't need outside air.
• Aerodynamic shapes built for thin air and extreme heat.
• Ballistic climbs where the plane builds up speed low and trades it for altitude in a steep zoom upward.
• Mothership launches that drop the spaceplane from a high-altitude carrier so it doesn't have to climb from the ground.

Each plane on this list uses some combination of these approaches.

Pro Tip: When you see "service ceiling" listed for a plane, that's the highest altitude it can maintain in level flight. The peak altitude during a zoom climb can be much higher, but only for a moment.

If high-performance flight in general fascinates you, the world's most capable fighter jets push many of the same boundaries that early spaceplanes did, just in a different direction.

5 Planes That Can Fly in Space

These are the five aircraft that have either reached space outright or come close enough to legitimately wear the label. Each one tells a different story about how humans figured out how to fly where there's almost nothing left to fly through.

1. North American X-15

If you had to pick one aircraft that defined the dream of a real spaceplane, it would be the X-15.

The X-15 hypersonic rocket-powered aircraft, built by North American Aviation, greatly expanded our knowledge of flight at speeds exceeding Mach 6 and altitudes above 250,000 feet. A joint project among NASA, the U.S. Air Force, and the U.S. Navy, the X-15's first powered flight took place on Sept. 17, 1959. Between 1959 and 1968, 12 pilots flew 199 missions in three X-15 airframes.

Here's the thing that still feels unreal. The X-15 didn't take off from a runway. It was carried up to about 45,000 feet under the wing of a modified B-52 bomber, then dropped. Once it was free, the pilot lit the rocket engine and pointed the nose up.

The numbers are staggering even by today's standards:

• Highest Mach number: 6.7, set by pilot Bill Knight
• Highest altitude: 107,960 meters (354,200 feet), achieved by pilot Joseph Walker
• Eight of 12 pilots received astronaut wings

That altitude, about 67 miles up, is well past both the U.S. and the international space boundaries. Walker's record stood as the highest altitude for a piloted aircraft until it was surpassed by SpaceShipOne on Oct. 4, 2004. The X-15 didn't just edge past Mach 1 either. It was one of the rare aircraft that smashed through the sound barrier and kept right on going to hypersonic speeds.

Fun Fact: Neil Armstrong was one of the X-15 test pilots before he ever sat inside an Apollo capsule. The lessons learned from this rocket plane shaped how humans would eventually fly to the Moon and back.

The X-15 also had a quirk most planes don't need to worry about. Up where the air gets too thin for control surfaces to work, the plane used small reaction control thrusters in the nose and wings, just like a spacecraft. It was a plane on the way up and basically a spaceship at the top of the arc.

2. SpaceShipOne

Forty years after the X-15 first flew, a tiny private team did something that even most space agencies hadn't bothered to do. They built a real spaceplane on a private budget.

SpaceShipOne was designed by engineer Burt Rutan and his company Scaled Composites, funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. The goal was simple: win the $10 million Ansari X Prize by sending a reusable, crewed aircraft past 100 kilometers twice within two weeks.

It worked. SpaceShipOne won the Ansari X Prize in 2004 when it flew above the Kármán line twice within two weeks, as well as during a test flight three months earlier.

The design borrowed the X-15's mothership idea but added a brilliant twist. For the X Prize entry, Rutan settled on an air-launch design with a unique approach to descent. Just before SpaceShipOne reached its highest altitude, the craft's two tail booms would hinge upward by 65 degrees like hackles on a dog's back. This "feathering" system greatly increased the craft's drag during descent, slowing it down to the point where it could safely fall through the atmosphere, retract the tail booms, and then glide to a runway for landing.

That feathering trick changed everything. It meant the plane could come back from space without needing the heavy thermal shielding the Space Shuttle relied on.

Key facts about SpaceShipOne:

• First crewed private spaceflight: June 21, 2004
• Won the Ansari X Prize: October 4, 2004
• Peak altitude: Just over 100 km (above the Kármán line)
• Now hangs in the Smithsonian alongside the Wright Flyer and the Spirit of St. Louis

Why It Matters: SpaceShipOne proved that a small private team could build a working spaceplane without a government program behind it. Almost every commercial spaceflight company that came after owes it something.

3. SpaceShipTwo (VSS Unity)

After SpaceShipOne's win, Richard Branson licensed the technology and aimed to scale it up into a passenger-carrying business. The result was SpaceShipTwo, a bigger, more comfortable version of the original built to fly paying customers to space as a commercial suborbital spaceplane.

The basic idea stayed the same. When it begins commercial flights, SpaceShipTwo will carry six passengers and fly to 50,000 feet (15,240 meters) in altitude while attached to the bottom of WhiteKnightTwo. The craft will then separate for the trip into space by firing its engines for about 70 seconds and then shutting them off for the final coast up to 62 miles (100 km) above Earth.

In practice, SpaceShipTwo never quite reached the Kármán line during operational service. The first one, VSS Unity, crossed the U.S. 50-mile boundary several times. On July 11, 2021, Virgin Galactic's flight reached 282,773 feet (about 53.5 miles or 86 kilometers). That was the famous flight that carried Richard Branson himself.

Heads Up: Crossing 50 miles up is enough to earn U.S. astronaut wings, but it's not high enough to count as "space" under the FAI's Kármán line standard. Both numbers are technically correct depending on which definition you use.

A short summary of SpaceShipTwo's run:

• First powered flight: April 2013
• First flight to U.S.-defined space: December 13, 2018
• First fully crewed flight: July 11, 2021
• First commercial passenger flight (Galactic 01): June 29, 2023
• Final flight: June 8, 2024

Unity was retired on 8 June 2024 after its final flight took place on that date, as Virgin Galactic shifted its focus to the next generation Delta-class vehicles. The company's plan is to keep the suborbital tourism business going with newer, faster-turnaround spacecraft.

If you've ever wondered about the other end of the aviation spectrum, aircraft built for new pilots show just how wide the range of human flight has become. From a Cessna 172 to a rocket-powered spaceplane, it's all technically called "flying."

4. The Space Shuttle Orbiter

Here's where the rules get bent the most. The Space Shuttle was, in every legal and practical sense, a spaceplane. It had wings, a cockpit, control surfaces, and landing gear. It came back to Earth and landed on a runway like a glider. But it also flew in orbit, not just above the atmosphere for a few minutes.

That makes the Shuttle Orbiter the only true orbital winged aircraft to ever fly regular operational missions.

The Shuttle launched vertically attached to a giant external fuel tank and two solid rocket boosters. At liftoff the entire system weighed 2 million kilograms (4.4 million pounds) and stood 56 meters (184 feet) high. During launch the boosters and the orbiter's main engines fired together, producing about 31,000 kilonewtons (7 million pounds) of thrust.

Once in orbit, the Shuttle could stay up for around two weeks doing real work. Crews deployed satellites, repaired the Hubble Space Telescope, built the International Space Station, and ran experiments in weightlessness.

But the part that earned it a spot here is how it came home. The Space Shuttle flew as a glider during reentry and landing. During ascent, thrust was provided by the three Space Shuttle Main Engines and the two Solid Rocket Boosters that were joined to the orange External Fuel Tank. The solids were jettisoned about two minutes into the ascent, and the fuel tank was jettisoned as the shuttle entered Earth orbit. So there were no propellants available to the engines during descent, and though the engines were still present, the shuttle returned as an unpowered glider.

Keep in Mind: The Shuttle had exactly one shot at every landing. With no engines firing on descent, there was no "go-around." Pilots flew the world's heaviest glider through a flaming reentry and put it on a runway every single time.

The Shuttle program ran from the first orbital flight of Columbia on April 12, 1981, until Atlantis landed for the final time in July 2011. Over those 30 years, five orbiters flew 135 missions.

5. MiG-25 Foxbat

The MiG-25 doesn't usually show up on lists of spacecraft. It's not a spaceplane. It never officially crossed any space boundary. But it deserves a mention because it's the closest thing to a "regular" military fighter that ever flirted with space.

The Foxbat was Soviet engineering at its most aggressive. The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25 "Foxbat" was designed in the 1960s by the Soviet Union to intercept American bombers and spy planes. Built for raw speed and altitude, the MiG-25 could reach a jaw-dropping altitude of over 123,000 feet (37+ km), almost at the Kármán line, the edge of space recognized by many experts at around 100 km (328,000 ft).

That altitude record didn't come from a normal flight. On August 31, 1977, Soviet test pilot Alexander Fedotov reached an altitude of 37,650 meters, or 123,523 feet, during a special flight as part of a series of record attempts. He got there by zoom-climbing. The MiG accelerated low, then traded all that energy for altitude in a steep ballistic arc.

What makes the MiG-25 special:

• Twin huge turbojets built for raw thrust over efficiency
• A stainless steel airframe instead of the more common aluminum, because of the heat from sustained high-speed flight
• Operational ceiling of around 80,000 to 90,000 feet, with zoom climbs reaching far higher
• Still in limited service with a few air forces decades after its first flight

Fun Fact: For years, civilians could pay to ride along on "edge of space" flights in two-seat Russian MiG variants. The flights climbed high enough that passengers could see the curvature of the Earth and the black of space above the horizon.

The MiG-25 won't qualify as a true spaceplane. But it's a reminder that with enough thrust and the right flight profile, even a fighter jet can punch through to the edge of where space begins.

Honorable Mentions That Came Close

A few aircraft deserve mention even though they didn't cross any official space boundary. They came near enough to belong in the conversation.

Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird

The SR-71 wasn't designed to reach space, but it operated higher than almost any other crewed aircraft ever to enter regular service. It could operate safely at a maximum speed of Mach 3.3 at an altitude of more than sixteen miles, or 25,908 m (85,000 ft), above the earth. The crew had to wear pressure suits similar to those worn by astronauts.

On July 28, 1976, an SR-71 set two world records for its class: an absolute speed record of 2,193.167 miles per hour and an absolute altitude record of 85,060.997 feet. The pressure suits the crew wore were essentially the same suits used by astronauts during early space missions. From up there, the sky overhead looks deep purple-black.

Lockheed U-2

The U-2 reconnaissance plane was the SR-71's older, slower cousin. It could cruise above 70,000 feet for hours on end, again requiring the pilot to wear a full pressure suit. Like the Blackbird, it couldn't reach space, but it lived in a part of the sky most aircraft will never touch.

Bell X-2 and X-1B

The Bell rocket planes of the 1950s pushed altitude and speed records that paved the way for the X-15 program. They didn't reach space, but they got close enough to teach engineers how to design aircraft for thin air.

Flying411 lists aircraft across the full performance spectrum, from training trainers to turbine-powered jets, and connects buyers with certified A&P mechanics and avionics specialists to keep them in the air.

What Makes Space-Capable Planes So Different

You can't just take a normal jet and aim it straight up. Space-capable aircraft solve three big problems that regular planes never have to think about.

Engines That Work Where Air Doesn't

A jet engine breathes. The higher you go, the less it has to breathe. Above about 60,000 feet, most jet engines simply can't make enough thrust to keep climbing. That's why every plane on this list either uses rocket engines or a zoom climb to reach extreme altitudes.

Rocket engines carry both their fuel and their oxidizer. They don't care if there's air outside or not. The X-15 used liquid rocket propellants. SpaceShipOne used a hybrid rocket motor that burned solid fuel with liquid nitrous oxide.

Heat Shielding and Reentry

Going up is hard. Coming back is harder. When you fall from space, the air gets thicker fast, and air pushing against an aircraft at thousands of miles per hour creates ferocious heat.

The Space Shuttle dealt with this using thousands of individual heat-resistant tiles glued to its belly. SpaceShipOne and SpaceShipTwo avoid the worst of it by never going fast enough to need a full thermal protection system. They come in steep but relatively slow.

Quick Tip: This is one big reason orbital spaceplanes are so rare. The faster you have to come back, the more heat shielding you need, which adds weight, which means more fuel to go up, which means more cost. The math is brutal.

Pressure Suits and Life Support

At extreme altitude, the air pressure is so low that human blood would start to boil at body temperature if a cabin lost pressure. That's why X-15, SR-71, U-2, and Shuttle crews all wore full pressure suits.

These aren't fashion accessories. They're full-body life support systems that keep the pilot alive if the cabin ever lost pressure or if they had to bail out at extreme altitude.

Why Most Planes Will Never Fly in Space

If reaching space were easy, more aircraft would do it. The reason most planes will never come close has nothing to do with engineering ambition. It comes down to physics, economics, and purpose.

Here are the main reasons everyday aircraft stay safely in the troposphere or low stratosphere:

1. Air-breathing engines hit a wall. Above a certain altitude, a turbojet or turbofan just runs out of air to burn.
2. Wings need something to push against. Lift depends on air molecules flowing over the wing. Up high, there aren't enough of them.
3. Fuel cost is brutal. Even reaching 60,000 feet eats fuel quickly. Reaching 300,000 feet requires rocket-grade propellants and a totally different kind of vehicle.
4. There's no commercial reason. A typical airliner doesn't need to fly any higher than it does now. Flying higher would cost more and accomplish nothing for passengers.
5. The hardware doesn't scale down well. You can't just bolt a small rocket onto a Cessna and call it a spaceplane. Every system, from pressure to heat to control, has to be redesigned from scratch.

It's the same reason planes built for crossing oceans without refueling look so different from short-range trainers. Aircraft are built for specific missions, and "fly to space" is a very narrow mission.

The Future of Space-Capable Aircraft

The list of planes that have crossed into space is short. The list of planes that will be space-capable is growing.

A few trends are shaping what comes next:

• Hypersonic spaceplanes. Several companies are working on aircraft that take off from a runway, climb to hypersonic speeds, and brush the edge of space before gliding back down. One proposed aircraft is designed to launch conventionally, use rocket engines to reach the edge of space at hypersonic speeds, glide for thousands of miles, and land traditionally, offering a low-G flight experience for up to 12 passengers, with test flights projected by 2030.
• Reusable suborbital tourism vehicles. Virgin Galactic's next-generation Delta-class ships are designed to fly much more often than VSS Unity could.
• Cargo spaceplanes. Sierra Space's Dream Chaser is preparing to deliver cargo to the International Space Station and land on a runway, very much in the Shuttle tradition.
• Hybrid concepts. Companies are exploring spaceplanes that mix jet engines for low-altitude climb with rocket motors for the dash to space.

Ready to find your own next aircraft? From your first single-engine plane to a turbine, Flying411 makes it easy to search listings and connect with the people who can help you get airborne.

Conclusion

The list of planes that can fly in space is short, but it covers some of the most jaw-dropping aircraft ever built. A rocket-dropped research plane that hit Mach 6.7. A private spaceplane that won a $10 million prize. A delta-winged orbiter that landed without engines. A passenger ship taking civilians past the U.S. space boundary. And a Cold War interceptor with enough raw power to zoom into the high stratosphere.

None of these aircraft work like the planes most of us know. They use rockets, ballistic arcs, motherships, and feathered tails. They wear heat shielding and carry their pilots in pressure suits. They're not really airliners or fighters in the normal sense. They're the bridge between flying and spaceflight.

For first-time pilots chasing a cross-country or aviation lovers who can't get enough of the wildest end of flight, Flying411 keeps you plugged into the world of flight, from the runway to the edge of space.

FAQs

Can a regular passenger plane reach space?

No. Commercial airliners are designed to fly between roughly 30,000 and 45,000 feet, which is far below any definition of space. Their engines need air, their wings need lift, and their airframes aren't built for the heat or vacuum of high-altitude or suborbital flight.

What's the highest altitude a plane has ever reached?

The X-15 holds the record for the highest altitude reached by a piloted, winged, powered aircraft, at about 354,200 feet, or roughly 67 miles up. SpaceShipOne later flew slightly higher during one of its X Prize flights, depending on how you count winged spaceplanes versus traditional aircraft.

Did the Space Shuttle actually fly like a plane?

It did during landing. Once it came back from orbit, the Shuttle had no engines firing and glided down to a runway using only its wings and control surfaces. On the way up it was strapped to rockets, but on the way home it was the heaviest unpowered glider in history.

How fast does a plane need to go to reach space?

Reaching space and staying there are different. A suborbital plane like SpaceShipOne can pop above the Kármán line at relatively modest speeds because it just needs to coast up and back down. Reaching orbit, on the other hand, requires roughly Mach 25, which is why orbital flight is so much more demanding than a suborbital hop.

Are there any planes flying to space right now?

Operational suborbital spaceplanes are in transition. Virgin Galactic retired VSS Unity in 2024 and is working toward its next-generation Delta-class vehicles. Several other companies are developing hypersonic and suborbital spaceplanes, with first flights targeted for the late 2020s and beyond.