1 dead after Virgin Galactic spaceship crashes during test

A suborbital passenger spaceship being developed by Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic crashed during a test flight on Friday at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, the company said. Two pilots were aboard the spaceship, which was undergoing its first powered test flight since January, but it was not immediately known if they were able to parachute to safety. The spaceship then fires its rocket motor to catapult it to about 62 miles (100 km) above Earth, giving passengers a view of the planet set against the blackness of space and a few minutes of weightlessness. The spaceship is based on a prototype, called SpaceShipOne, which 10 years ago won the $10 million Ansari X Prize for the first privately developed manned spacecraft to fly in space.

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