Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic space adventure has suffered a major setback with the crash of its SpaceShipTwo rocket plane, which crashed during test flight on Friday killing one pilot and seriuosly injuring another.
A statement from the company that has over 700 celebrity customers waiting to travel to space on the rocket plane siad SpaceShipTwo suffered an “in-flight anomaly” during a powered test flight that resulted in the loss of the aircraft.
“During the test. the vehicle suffered a serious anomaly resulting in the loss of the vehicle. The WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft landed safely. Our first concern is the status of the pilots, which is unknown at this time,” the statement.
Each of the 700 wanabe space tourists coughed up $250,000 for the trips that were expected to begin ferryng them to outer space.
Two pilots fly in SpaceShipTwo’s cockpit during a test. Those pilots are equipped with parachutes, and after the anomaly, chutes were reportedly sighted over the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, the base from which SpaceShipTwo and its WhiteKnightTwo carrier plane took off.
The said anomaly came after SpaceShipTwo fired up its rocket engine in flight for the first time in more than nine months.
The aim of such flights was to test SpaceShipTwo in preparation for suborbital trips to the edge of outer space, beyond 100 kilometers (62 miles) in altitude. Virgin Galactic had said SpaceShipTwo’s first trip to an outer-space altitude could have taken place before the end of the year, depending on how the tests went. And the company’s billionaire founder, Richard Branson, was hoping to ride on the first commercial flight next year.