The solid plastic-type propellant is ignited by nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas. The Virgin probe will likely will focus on SpaceShipTwo's rocket engine, which on Friday was flying with a new type of fuel for the first time, experts said. On Tuesday, an Antares rocket built and launched by Orbital Sciences Corp exploded after liftoff from Wallops Island, Virginia, destroying a cargo ship bound for the International Space Station. "We may have lots of evidence that will help us with the investigative process," he said.įriday's crash was the second disaster in less than a week suffered by a private space company, dealing a blow to the fledgling commercial space industry that has been taking on work traditionally done by governments. "This was a test flight, and test flights are typically very well documented in terms of data," said Christopher Hart, acting chairman of the NTSB. The injured pilot, who has not been identified, parachuted from the plane was hospitalized for severe injuries, officials said.Ī team of investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board arrived at the crash site on Saturday to begin piecing together what led to the accident. He was flying for the ninth time aboard SpaceShipTwo, including serving as the co-pilot on the vehicle's first rocket-powered test flight on April 29, 2013, according to his biography on the company's website. The coroner's office could not be reached immediately to confirm the report.Īlsbury was a project engineer and test pilot at Scaled Composites, a Northrop Grumman Corp subsidiary that built and designed the spacecraft for Virgin Galactic. The pilot who died was identified as Michael Alsbury, 39, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing the Kern County coroner's office. "If we can overcome it, we will make absolutely certain that the dream lives on," he said. "We owe it to our pilots to find out exactly what went wrong," Branson said during a news conference in Mojave. Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo went down during a powered test flight, scattering debris over the Mojave Desert, 95 miles (150 km) north of Los Angeles. Billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson said on Saturday he was determined to find out what caused a passenger spaceship being developed by his space tourism company to crash during a test flight in California, killing one pilot and injuring the other.īranson arrived in California's Mojave Desert to meet his Virgin Galactic team and federal officials who were opening their investigation into Friday's accident, the second in less than a week involving a commercial space company.
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