Crew member killed in SpaceShipTwo crash identified
MOJAVE, Calif. (KABC) -- The crew member who was killed in the SpaceShipTwo crash was identified as 39-year-old Michael Tyner Alsbury of Tehachapi.
The Kern County Sheriff's Department confirmed Alsbury's identity on Saturday.
Alsbury was killed and another crew member was injured Friday when Virgin Galactic's prototype space tourism rocket exploded in flight over the Mojave Desert, according to witnesses.
The crew member who survived Friday's crash was identified as 43-year-old Peter Siebold. He sustained moderate to major injuries after parachuting to safety and was airlifted to Antelope Valley Hospital.
Both men worked for Scaled Composites, the company developing the spaceship for Virgin Galactic.
"The Scaled Composites family lost a respected and devoted colleague yesterday, Michael Alsbury, who was the co-pilot for the test flight of SpaceShipTwo," the company said in a statement Saturday. "Peter Siebold, the Director of Flight Operations at Scaled Composites, was piloting SpaceShipTwo. He is alert and talking with his family and doctors. We remain focused on supporting the families of the two pilots and all of our employees, as well as the agencies investigating the accident. We ask at this time that everyone please respect the privacy of the families."
Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson vowed at a news conference Saturday to find out what caused SpaceShipTwo to crash. He gave no details of Friday's accident, deferring to the National Transportation Safety Board.
"We are determined to find out what went wrong," he said, asserting that safety has always been the top priority of the program that envisions taking wealthy tourists to the edge of space for a brief experience of weightlessness and a view of Earth below.
"Yesterday, we fell short," he said. "We'll now comprehensively assess the results of the crash and are determined to learn from this and move forward."
PHOTOS: Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo accident
NTSB Acting Chairman Christopher A. Hart, who also spoke at the news conference, said more than a dozen investigators in a range of specialties were forming teams to examine the crash site, collect data and interview witnesses.
Hart said the investigation will have similarities to a typical NTSB probe as well as some differences.
"This will be the first time we have been in the lead of a space launch (accident) that involved persons onboard," said Hart, noting that the NTSB did participate in investigations of the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters.
Hart said he did not immediately know the answers to such questions as whether the spaceship had flight recorders or the altitude of the accident, but noted that test flights are usually well documented.
VIDEO: Crash site of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo
Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo space tourism rocket exploded in flight over the Mojave Desert on Friday.
NTSB investigators are expected to head to an area about 20 miles from the Mojave airfield where debris from the spaceship fell over a wide swath of uninhabited desert.
SpaceShipTwo, typically flown by a crew of two pilots, has been under development at Mojave Air and Spaceport in the desert northeast of Los Angeles. The experimental space flight vehicle is carried aloft by a specially designed jet and then released before igniting its rocket for suborbital thrill ride into space and then a return to Earth as a glider.
Takeoff occurred at 9:30 a.m., with the release happening at 10:10 a.m., according to Stuart Witt, CEO of Mojave Air and Space Port. Two minutes later, they were aware of an "in-flight anomaly," Witt said.
"I will tell you from my eyes and my ears, I detected nothing that appeared abnormal," Witt said at a Friday news conference.
The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement that the incident happened "shortly after the space flight vehicle separated from WhiteKnightTwo, the vehicle that carried it aloft."
One pilot was found dead inside the spacecraft and another parachuted out and was flown by helicopter to a hospital, Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said.
The accident occurred just as it seemed commercial space flights were near, after a period of development that lasted far longer than hundreds of prospective passengers had expected.
Branson once envisioned operating flights by 2007. Last month, he talked about the first flight being next spring with his son.
Friday's flight marked the 55th for SpaceShipTwo, which was intended to be the first of a fleet of craft. This was only the fourth flight to include a brief rocket firing. The rockets fire after the spacecraft is released from the underside of a larger carrying plane. During other flights, the craft either was not released from its mothership or functioned as a glider after release.
At 60 feet long, SpaceShipTwo featured two large windows for each of up to six passengers, one on the side and one overhead.
The accident's cause was not immediately known, nor was the altitude at which the blast occurred. The first rocket-powered test flight peaked at about 10 miles above Earth. Commercial flights would go 62 miles or higher.
Virgin Galactic - owned by Branson's Virgin Group and Aabar Investments PJS of Abu Dhabi - sells seats on each prospective journey for $250,000. The company says that "future astronauts," as it calls customers, include Stephen Hawking, Justin Bieber, Ashton Kutcher and Russell Brand. The company reports receiving $90 million from about 700 prospective passengers.
Friday's accident was the second this week involving private space flight. On Tuesday, an unmanned commercial supply rocket bound for the International Space Station exploded moments after liftoff in Virginia.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
