SpaceShipTwo, the Virgin Galactic space plane, has crashed east of Mojave, according to the director of the Mojave Air and Space Port Stu Witt. The California Highway Patrol has confirmed the death of one test pilot.
A medical helicopter carried one patient with major injuries to a Lancaster hospital for treatment. The names of the victims have not yet been released.
Virgin Galactic previously announced that the rocket plane had “experienced an in-flight anomaly” on its Twitter page. The first reports of a downed aircraft came in at 10:51 a.m.
Virgin Galactic has a released a statement:
“Virgin Galactic’s partner Scaled Composites conducted a powered test flight of SpaceShipTwo earlier today. During the test, the vehicle suffered a serious anomaly resulting in the loss of the vehicle. The WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft landed safely. Our first concern is the status of the pilots, which is unknown at this time. We will work closely with relevant authorities to determine the cause of this accident and provide updates as soon as we are able to do so.”
The Virgin Galactic space tourism rocket exploded after taking off on a test flight in Southern California’s Mojave Desert, a witness said Friday.
California Highway Patrol confirmed, at least one was dead and another was injured. The SpaceShipTwo rocket is typically flown by a crew of two pilots and has been under development at Mojave Air and Space Port in the desert northeast of Los Angeles.
“During the test, the vehicle suffered a serious anomaly resulting in the loss of SpaceShipTwo,” Virgin Galactic tweeted Friday.
Ken Brown, a photographer who witnessed the crash, said the space tourism craft exploded after it was released from a plane that carries it to a high altitude.
The company founded by British billionaire Richard Branson would not say what happened other that it was working with authorities to determine the cause of the “accident.”
Virgin Galactic has been the front-runner in the fledgling space-tourism industry.
SpaceShipTwo was designed to be carried aloft by a specially designed jet and then released before igniting its rocket for suborbital thrill ride into space and then a return to Earth as a glider.
Virgin Galactic, once it finished developing its rocket ship, was going to launch space tourism flights from the quarter-billion-dollar Spaceport America in southern New Mexico.
Editors Note: This has been a rough week for the fledgling private commercial AeroSpace Trafficking industry. Earlier this week a Commercial Rocket had to be destroyed just after liftoff from it’s pad as it was en route to the International Space Station.