Branson’s Virgin spaceship crashes, killing pilot

A commercial spacecraft being developed by Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic company crashed during a test flight on Friday at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, killing one crew member and seriously injuring the other, officials said

A spaceship being developed by Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic company crashed during a test flight on Friday 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.

The back-to-back accidents dealt a blow to the fledgling commercial space launch industry, which has been taking on more work traditionally done by the U.S. government while expanding for-profit space markets, including tourism.

Television footage of the Virgin Galactic crash site showed wreckage of the spacecraft lying in two large pieces on the ground, and the company said the spacecraft was destroyed. Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said a debris field was spread over more than a mile.

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, he said.

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.

Friday’s crash occurred shortly after the craft, dubbed SpaceShipTwo, separated from the jet airplane that carried it aloft for its high-altitude launch, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.