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NTSB looks at Virgin ‘feather’

November 3, 2014

Investigators have found that a landing function of the crashed Virgin Galactic spaceship deployed early. SpaceShipTwo's tail boom, a key safety feature for re-entering the atmosphere, inadvertently rotated too soon.

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Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo
Image: Reuters/David McNew

The premature deployment of a descent device could prove to have been a factor in the crash of Virgin's suborbital spaceship, US investigators said Sunday. Christopher Hart, acting chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), told a news conference that investigators determined that operators should have deployed the "feathering" system after the vehicle had hit about 1.4 times the speed of sound, or 1,000 miles per hour (1,600 kph). Instead, the feather began rotating at Mach 1, he said.

The co-pilot unlocked the system, which folds the vehicle in half to create drag, early, but a step to move the feather handle into position occurred "without being commanded," Hart said. Investigators also recovered SpaceShipTwo's propellant tanks and engine intact, indicating that no explosion had occurred.

SpaceShipTwo broke apart after detaching from its mothership at 45,000 feet (13,700 meters) on Friday, killing one pilot and badly injuring the other and leaving wreckage over an area of 5 miles (8 kilometers). Hart emphasized that the agency could not yet state that the early deployment of the ship's feather had solely caused the accident, stressing that the investigation had just begun.

"We have months and months of investigation," Hart said.

Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo
Hart made his remarks late Sunday in the Mojave DesertImage: Reuters/Lucy Nicholson

Thirty-nine-year-old co-pilot Michael Alsbury died in the crash. Peter Siebold, the 43-year-old pilot riding in the right-hand seat, parachuted to the ground and has received treatment for serious injuries at a nearby hospital.

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Ambitious, troubled project

Virgin Galactic, the space tourism company of billionaire Richard Branson, whose empire ranges from airlines to music stores and mobile phones - had just begun test flights. The crash has delayed the start of passenger service indefinitely. In 2007, during the early stages of SpaceShipTwo's development, an explosion killed three engineers testing a rocket on the ground.

Branson plans to travel on the first commercial flight with his son. About 800 people have put down deposits for the journey, which costs $250,000 (200,000 euros). The craft would travel 62 miles above Earth.

"Safety has always been our number one priority," Branson said on Saturday, adding that the company would not "push on blindly" with its ambitious space program until investigators had determined the causes of the accident.

mkg/ksb (Reuters, AFP, dpa, AP)