Friday, October 31, 2014

Virgin Galactic Spacecraft Crashes, Kills One

In a major blow to Southern California's nascent space tourism industry, Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo crashed in testing over the Mojave desert Friday afternoon, killing one person. Virgin Galactic said the crash came after a "serious anomaly" during testing. Virgin Galactic said that the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) would be arriving in Mojave on Saturday morning to investigate the crash. George Whitesides, CEO of Virgin Galactic, released a statement saying that "Space is hard and today was a tough day," explaining that the company was doing all it could for the crew and family. The crash comes only two days after a major, catastrophic launch failure of a rocket from Orbital Sciences in Virginia.