A passenger spaceship being developed by Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic company crashed during a test flight on October 31 near the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, killing one pilot and seriously injuring the other, officials said.
The crash of the suborbital vehicle, undergoing its first powered test flight since January over the Mojave Desert, 95 miles (150 km) north of Los Angeles, came days after another private space company, Orbital Sciences Corp, lost a rocket in an explosion moments after liftoff in Virginia.
One pilot was killed in the crash and his body was found in the wreckage, while the second pilot, who ejected and parachuted to the ground, survived with serious injuries, Youngblood said. The survivor was found more than a mile from the main wreckage.
Both crew members were test pilots for Scaled Composites, the Northrop Grumman Corp subsidiary that designed and built the spacecraft for Virgin and lost three other employees in a July 2007 ground test accident.
(Source: REUTERS)
