Virgin Galactic spacecraft goes down in California
October 31, 2014
The space tourism rocket, known as SpaceShipTwo, went down near Mojave in the Californian desert on Friday during its first powered test flight since January. A spokesman for the California Highway Patrol said one pilot died in the crash, while another managed to eject and was flown to hospital with serious injuries.
Virgin Galactic said on Twitter that the vehicle "suffered a serious anomaly, resulting in the loss of SpaceShipTwo."
The company added that it was working with authorities to determine what caused the accident.
Virgin Galactic, founded by British billionaire Richard Branson, has been a front-runner in the space tourism industry. It had been developing SpaceShipTwo in the desert northeast of Los Angeles and planned to produce a fleet of the vehicles to take passengers to space from the Spaceport America in southern New Mexico.
It is already taking bookings - more than 800 people have paid or put down deposits - to fly aboard the rocket, which has an initial ticket price of $200,000 (160,000 euros).
The suborbital vehicle is usually flown by a crew of two pilots. It was designed to be towed to an altitude of about 13,700 kilometers (45,000 feet) and then released before using its rocket motor to shoot it into space for breathtaking views of the planet Earth.
nm/glb (AP, Reuters)