The company Virgin Galactic announced on its Twitter account that its space plane SpaceShip-2 (SpaceShipTwo) exploded in mid-flight. The fragments were scattered over a large area in the Mojave Desert in California. Virgin tweeted that the rocket-powered plane suffered an "in-flight anomaly"
Update – 1/11/2014 – 10:00 am: Updates from the crash site of the spaceship-2 tourist spacecraft
Nancy Atkinson, Universe Today
A few hours ago, the first civilian space plane crashed in a test flight over the Mojave Desert in California while turning on its engines shortly after separating from the carrier plane.
Virgin Galactic announced on its Twitter account that its space plane SpaceShipTwo exploded mid-flight. The fragments were scattered over a large area in the Mojave Desert in California. Virgin tweeted that the plane equipped with rocket engines suffered an "in-flight anomaly" during a test flight that included starting the engines. Other eyewitnesses said that there were fatalities in the accident. The event took place at ten in the morning West Coast Time, 2:20 Israel Time.
"The spaceship disintegrated and the fragments began to fall to the ground and scatter in the desert," tweeted Doug Messier of the Space.com website, the editor-in-chief of the Parabolic Arc website. The news outlets are reporting that the California Highway Patrol has reported one death and one serious injury in the Spaceship-2 crash. The ABC television network reported from its local station in California that rescue teams were seen carrying a man on a stretcher into a helicopter."
Here is the announcement from Virgin Galactic: "Virgin Galactic's partner, the aircraft manufacturer Scaled Composites, performed the test flight of Spaceship-2. During the test flight the vessel suffered from a serious anomaly that caused the loss of Spaceship-2. The plane carrying WK2 (White Knight) landed safely. Our first concern is for the condition of the pilots. We will work together with the relevant authorities to find the cause of the accident and will update as soon as possible."
Monsieur, who was at the test site at the time of the accident, also tweeted that he saw a body still attached to the seat at one of the scattering points of the fragments. He also wrote that "fragments of the ship are scattered all along the road."
Flying Spaceship-2 requires two pilots equipped with parachutes, but not ejection seats. The reports indicated that one parachute had opened. Other eyewitnesses reported that Spaceship-2 exploded after starting its engines. According to Spaceflightnow.com, it was the first powered test since January to test a nylon-based solid fuel engine. This was SpaceShip 55's 2th flight and its 35th independently from the carrier aircraft.
The Federal Aviation Authority said in its announcement that: "Shortly after 10 a.m. West Coast Time, ground controllers at the space port in the Mojave Desert lost contact with Spaceship 2, an experimental space plane. The incident occurred over the Mojave Desert shortly after the spacecraft separated from the WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft. Two crew members were aboard Spaceship-2 at the time of the accident. The carrier aircraft, the White Knight 2, remained in the air at the time of the accident. The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the accident.
The National Transportation Safety Board also said on Twitter that it plans to send a team to investigate the Virgin Galactic flight that crashed in California's Mojave Desert.
A spokesman for the Kern County Sheriff's Office said the co-pilot was killed, but the lead pilot ejected and sustained moderate injuries. Virgin Galactic did not release the names of the two pilots.
Spaceship-2 is a combination of a spacecraft and an airplane. It is carried as high as possible on a carrier plane (the White Knight 2), separates from it and then activates rocket engines to rise above a height of 100 km - the official limit of space. When it reaches that height, it will fall back down, but in the meantime its passengers will experience up to 20 minutes of weightlessness, seeing the sky black and the Earth round. After that, it will land as a regular plane at the designated airport.
As mentioned a few days ago it exploded A private rocket that carried supplies to the space station when launched from Virginia
The CEO of the Israel Space Agency, Menachem Kidron, was interviewed this week by the Hadaan website regarding the Hunters missile accident, where the malfunction occurred in a liquid fuel engine, but he also referred to the possibility of malfunctions in solid fuel engines ("Rocket engines are extremely sensitive to malfunctions, so the production process must be planned and all production stages must be thoroughly checked").
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I looked at the pictures again. In the previous launch the engine was seen to start, shut off and start again. In this launch, the engine is seen to ignite, shut down and then explode. There was probably an excess of oxygen in the combustion chamber during the second ignition which caused the explosion.
They tried the new fuel dozens of times on the ground, but not at height. The low atmospheric pressure may have caused the accident. This was the only parameter different from the previous experiments.
But I make a reservation - it's all guesses based on a few pictures. The telemetry will tell.
It turns out that they used an engine with a solid fuel and a liquid oxidizer called a hybrid engine. The combustion material is in a combustion chamber that looks like a solid material rocket, but it has no oxidizer and is completely inert. The oxidizer is contained in a pressure tank in a gaseous or liquid state, and a valve allows passage of the oxidizer into the combustion chamber as needed.
A few years ago during the development of the engine there was an explosion with three deaths. Five months ago they changed the fuel - apparently they didn't test enough. One of the possible problems with such an engine is excessive pressure immediately after ignition, if the combustion chamber that contains the combustion material does not withstand it, an explosion will occur. Since the explosion happened immediately after ignition, that may have been the problem.
Look at the Russians, they use the most elementary method of sending missiles into space without the sophistication of airplanes and reusable missiles and they do it cheaply and almost without failures. Maybe this is the method?
good evening
Yehuda