Richard Branson’s spaceship crashes, pilot dead

Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic spaceship crashed on Friday while performing a flight test with two pilots on board. One of the pilots was killed and the other injured.

The wreckage

The unit, referred to SpaceShipTwo, was reported to have exploded at 45,000ft. The crash occurred in the Mojave Desert, California – north-east of Los Angeles, USA.

Sir Branson and his Virgin team are working on taking people to space in 2015 and Branson had pledged to take the first flight. Several other celebrities like Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, Harry Styles and Ashton Kutcher have requested seats on the journey which costs £156,000.

Branson has sent condolences to the families of the pilots involved in the disaster.
On twitter, he wrote: “Writing this on way to Mojave to join @VirginGalactic, TSC & Scaled teams. Shocked & saddened by tragic loss.

“All our thoughts are with the brave pilots & families affected by today's events in Mojave @VirginGalactic.

He added: “Space is hard – but worth it. We will persevere and move forward together."

George Whitesides, CEO of Virgin Galactic, in a statement said: “Our primary thoughts at this moment are with the crew and family, and we're doing everything we can for them now.

“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 company said that the spaceship had suffered a "serious anomaly" during the test.

“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”.