UPDATE: Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo Destroyed During Test Flight; One Fatality Reported

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
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UPDATE: November 1, 2014 (4:15 a.m.)
Virgin Galactic confirmed overnight that one of the two pilots onboard the SpaceShipTwo at the time of Friday’s test flight was killed when the vehicle crashed in California’s Mojave Desert, shortly before 11am local time. The other was reportedly able to parachute out of the vehicle and is now being treated as a local hospital for what The Guardian is calling “serious injuries”.
Neither individual’s name has been released, but both pilots were affiliated with Virgin’s partner Scaled Composites. In a blog post, Virgin Galactic chief Sir Richard Branson wrote that everyone associated with the SpaceShipTwo project was “deeply saddened by today’s events. All our thoughts are with the families of everyone affected by this tragic event, and we are doing everything we can to support them.”
According to BBC News, officials with the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) were set to begin their investigation on Saturday morning. That investigation is scheduled to last several days. Officials added that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) also planned to launch a probe into the incident, and local authorities will continue to be involved in the investigation.
“Our primary thoughts at this moment are with the crew and family, and we’re doing everything we can for them now,” Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides said in a statement on Facebook. “Space is hard and today was a tough day. We are going to be supporting the investigation as we figure out what happened today. We’re going to get through it. The future rests in many ways on hard days like this, but we believe we owe it to the team, that has been working so hard on this endeavor, to understand this and to move forward. And that is what we’ll do.”
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ORIGINAL: October 31, 2014 (3:05 p.m.)
A “serious anomaly” suffered by Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane during a powered test flight on Friday has left one person dead and resulted in the loss of the aircraft, various media outlets are reporting.
According to Alan Boyle of NBC News, the incident occurred after the vehicle was released from its WhiteKnightTwo carrier airplane and fired its rocket engine in flight for the first time in over nine months. Boyle, citing unnamed sources, said that SpaceShipTwo exploded in midflight, sending debris raining down into the Mojave Desert.
Virgin Galactic, via its Twitter account, confirmed that SpaceShipTwo had suffered a “serious anomaly” during the test and that the vehicle had been lost. The Richard Branson-owned space tourism company added that the status of the pilots was unknown as of shortly before 3pm EDT Friday afternoon, and that it would be working with authorities to determine the cause of the accident.
BBC News and the Associated Press (AP) both reported that the accident had resulted in one fatality, and that another individual suffered what was being described as a “major injury.” BBC News also noted that TV news images shot from a helicopter showed what appeared to be a piece of wreckage in the California desert bearing what appeared to be the Virgin logo.
“Kern County Fire Department reported it was heading to a location in the Mojave Desert. California Highway Patrol Officer Darlena Dotson said the agency was responding to a report of a crash in the Cantil area,” the AP added, while Boyle noted that Mojave airport director Stuart Witt had informed him that the crash occurred north of Mojave.
Keith Holloway, a Washington-based spokesman for the National Transportation and Safety Board, told NBC News that the agency was “in the process of collecting information,” while Ken Brown, a photographer who was covering the test flight, noted that he had witnessed an explosion high in the air and later came across SpaceShipTwo debris scattered across a small area of the desert.
“Before Friday’s flight, the most recent aerial outing was on Oct. 7, when SpaceShipTwo took an unpowered, gliding flight back to the Mojave runway,” Boyle said. “The latest test got off to a slow start. SpaceShipTwo spent more than three hours on the Mojave runway, slung beneath its WhiteKnightTwo mothership, while the ground team assessed whether the weather was right for flight.”
“The go-ahead was finally given for takeoff at 9:19am PT (12:19pm ET). “It took WhiteKnightTwo about 45 minutes to get to 50,000 feet, the altitude at which it released SpaceShipTwo for free flight,” he added. Virgin Galactic has confirmed that WhiteKnightTwo landed safely and was not damaged as a result of the mishap.
According to a statement issued on the Virgin Galactic website, “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. Our first concern is the status of the pilots, which is unknown at this time. We will work closely with the relevant authorities to determine the cause of the accident and provide updates as soon as we are able to do so.”
Friday’s incident marks the second time this week that an attempted US commercial spacecraft launch has suffered a serious setback. On Tuesday evening, an unmanned commercial rocket built by Orbital Sciences, on a mission to carry supplies to the International Space Station (ISS), exploded seconds after lifting off from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility launch site in Virginia. There were no injuries reported in that incident
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