It's still not clear when Virgin Galactic will conduct powered tests, but it seems to be close. Initial projections estimated that the craft would need between eight and 15 glide tests before the company was ready to progress to the next stage. The company has also been tight lipped on when commercial operations would begin, but it already has customers lined up. The Italian Space Agency has signed up to do suborbital science research on an upcoming SpaceShipTwo flight. Just how soon that will happen, however, is unclear.