Virgin Orbit, the commercial satellite launch business spun out of Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic space tourism company four years ago, is in talks to go public in a deal that would reportedly value it at $3 billion (£2.1 billion). Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Group owns 80% of Virgin Orbit, is reportedly leading negotiations with the Spac NextGen Acquisition II over a reverse takeover that would see the satellites launch business list on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange.

Virgin Orbit takes advantage of the same technology developed by Virgin Galactic to cheaply launch near orbit rocketships by first carrying them to 13 km above the surface of the Earth on a ‘mother aircraft’. The carrier then releases Virgin Galactic’s Unity ‘space plane’ whose rocket engines then ignite to power the vehicle to the edge of space 89km above Earth before it then glides back down to our planet’s surface.

Launching Unity from the air rather than the ground saves a lot of money on both rocket fuel and the cost of setting up a traditional launch site. That’s brought the expense of getting next-generation spacecraft into near orbit down considerably and made it much more commercially viable for companies and governments to launch near orbit satellites.

While Virgin Galactic’s business model is ‘space tourism’ – it will take paying passengers, by 2023 if the current target is met, briefly to the edge of space before they return to Earth, Virgin Orbit’s is cost efficient satellite launches. Many believe it is the less risky and potentially more profitable business of the two. The 20% of Virgin Orbit not owned by Virgin Group is held by Mubadala, the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund.

While the trend of using Spacs, shell companies that float on a stock exchange before agreeing a merger with a company that wants a more direct route to a public listing than a traditional IPO, has mushroomed over the past year, Sir Richard has plenty of experience with them. He’s listed a number of companies through Spacs over the years, raising hundreds of millions.

Virgin Orbit, which launched ten satellites in January and plans to drop another 10 off in near orbit later this month, declined to comment on the Spac listing rumours first reported on over the weekend by Sky News. NextGen Acquisition II has also so far remained tight-lipped.