Virgin spacecraft crash probe could take a year, says investigator
PUBLISHED : Monday, 03 November, 2014, 4:31am
UPDATED : Monday, 03 November, 2014, 6:14pm
Agence France-Presse in Mojave
Agents from the NTSB and the FBI survey the debris from SpaceShipTwo out in a desert field near to the crash site. Photo: AFP
Authorities who carried out their first full day of investigation into a US spacecraft crash that killed one pilot and seriously injured another said probing the incident could take a year.
National Transportation Safety Board acting chairman Christopher Hart said debris from the SpaceShipTwo rocket crash was strewn over an area 8km long, indicating a likely in-flight break-up.
The on-site investigation work would last up to a week, he said, but the full probe piecing together the facts and analysis "will be probably 12 months or so".
The doomed Virgin flight - the 35th by SpaceShipTwo, which is meant to carry tourists on short but expensive trips to space - marked the first time the spaceship had flown on a new kind of plastic-based rocket fuel mixture.
Hart earlier said investigators were entering unknown territory since it was "the first time we have been in the lead of a space launch that involved persons on board."
However, he noted that the test flight "was heavily documented in ways we don't usually see with normal accidents."
That included six cameras on the vehicle and three on WhiteKnightTwo - the bigger aircraft that had carried the spaceship.
There was also extensive telemetry data and a long-range camera at nearby Edwards Air Force Base, he said.
Friday's accident dealt a devastating setback to commercial space tourism. It was the second disaster to rock the private space industry after an Antares rocket carrying supplies to the International Space Station exploded after take-off in Virginia on Tuesday.
The surviving pilot, Peter Siebold, was now "alert and talking with his family and doctors", plane designer and builder Scaled Composites said.
It named the dead pilot as 39-year-old Michael Alsbury, a father of two.
