1 November 2014. One of the first suborbital spacecraft, the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo crashed during test flight in Mojave Desert, California.
According to the local news, the Highway Patrol officer in California was the first who confirmed the accident.
Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo Crashed Scene
There were two crew on board, one killed and another one in heavy injured has been evacuated to the nearest hospital. The Virgin Atlantic does not release the identity of the victims yet.
National Transportation Safety Board headed to the crashed scene and still on early investigation. The main caused of the accident is not known yet, but a witness told that the spacecraft exploded in air, just after the rockets fuel ignited.
Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo Touching Down
George Whitesides, the CEO of Virgin Galactic said that space is hard and today was a tough day, we believe we owe to our friends who flying these spacecraft and who all working and understand this and keep move forward.
SpaceShipTwo is a tourism spacecraft which able to carry about six passengers and two crew. The SpaceShipTwo is attached to WhiteKnightTwo during ferry flight and cruising into ideal altitude, after that the SpaceShipTwo is detached from WhiteKnightTwo and make a flight into suborbital altitude about 100 kilometers high using rockets fuel system.
WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo Attached
This is the second generation of suborbital spacecraft, the predecessor WhiteKnightOne and SpaceShipOne were successful flew without any major incident. Whilst, SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo has completed 54 of test flights in last five years development.
Virgin Galactic offers suborbital flight experience for only USD 250,000 per person.
