advertisement
Facebook
X
LinkedIn
WhatsApp
Reddit

Co-pilot dead in Virgin Galactic spaceship crash

The co-pilot of a Virgin Galactic test flight has died when the sub-orbital craft, SpaceShipTwo, broke up over the Mojave Desert in California shortly after it was launched yesterday night. The pilot of the craft ejected and is currently being treated in a local hospital.

The company says that the craft suffered a “serious anomaly”, but no more details – including the names of the pilots – have been released. It’s understood part of the test flight included evaluation of a new type of fuel for the ship.

This image of the breakup above was posted to Twitter by Ryan Burke.

SpaceShipTwo is part of the Virgin Galactic program for commercialising spaceflight. It was designed to be carried into the air on the back of a propeller-driven carrier vehicle, WhiteKnightTwo, from which it detaches and enters space under rocket power. After a few minutes of weightlessness, the spaceship is supposed to return to ground.

The crew of WhiteKnightTwo are understood to have returned their vehicle to ground safely.

Virgin’s space program has been in development for more than 10 years, and SpaceShipTwo was due to undertake the first commercial passenger craft flight into space before the end of the year. Tom Hanks and Angelina Jolie are among the celebrities who’ve paid up to a million dollars to fly on the first sub-orbital passenger trip. Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has also been offered a ticket by Virgin boss Richard Branson.

Bitcoin investors the Winklevoss twins purchased tickets with the cryptocurrency at the height of its value in March.

spaceshiptwo
SpaceShipTwo – CC by Virgin Galactic/MarkGreenberg

Virgin Galactic will be holding a press conference later today after, according to a statement on the company’s website following further investigation into the cause of the arrival of group CEO Richard Branson at Mojave.

On his blog, Branson said that he was “deeply saddened”.

“This was the latest part of an extensive test flight program, and the 55th time SpaceShipTwo had flown,” he writes, “It was WhiteKnightTwo’s 173rd flight and the 35th time SpaceShipTwo had flown freely. The testing program has also included extensive ground testing of all parts of the spaceship. We’ve always known that the road to space is extremely difficult – and that every new transportation system has to deal with bad days early in their history.”

“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 Georg Whitesides said in a statement, “I’d like to recognize the work of the first responders who we work with in the Antelope Valley for their efforts on behalf of the team. We’re also thinking of the team members that we have at the companies that have been working on this program.

“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 endeavour, to understand this and to move forward. And that is what we’ll do.”

A NASA spokesperson added: “While not a NASA mission, the pain of this tragedy will be felt by all the men and women who have devoted their lives to exploration. Space flight is incredibly difficult, and we commend the passion of all in the space community who take on risk to push the boundaries of human achievement.”

The Guardian UK has more details including eye witness reports from local photographers and bloggers.

The predecessor to SpaceShipTwo was SpaceShipOne, which won the Ansari X-Prize for the first privately funded spaceship to break out of the Earth’s atmosphere in 2004. It was backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and Scaled Composites, a firm which was part of the Virgin Galactic project until 2012.

advertisement

About Author

advertisement

Related News

advertisement