(Reuters) – A suborbital passenger spaceship being developed by Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic company crashed during a test flight on Friday at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, killing one crew member and seriously injuring the other, officials said.

The crash of the vehicle, undergoing its first powered test flight since January over the Mojave Desert, 95 miles (150 km) north of Los Angeles, came days after another private space company, Orbital Sciences Corp, lost a rocket in an explosion moments after liftoff in Virginia.

The back-to-back accidents dealt a considerable blow to the fledgling commercial space launch industry, which has been taking on more work traditionally done by the U.S. government while expanding for-profit space markets, including tourism.

Television footage of the Virgin Galactic crash site showed wreckage of the spacecraft lying in two large pieces on the ground, and the company said the spacecraft was destroyed. Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said a debris field was spread over more than a mile.

The co-pilot of the spaceship was killed in the crash, while the pilot, who ejected and parachuted to the ground, survived with serious injuries, Kern County Sheriff’s spokesman Ray Pruitt said. The pilot was found at the scene and taken to a local hospital, he said.

Stuart Witt, chief executive of the space port, said officials were not ready to “speculate on the cause” of the crash. The National Transportation Safety Board said it was sending one of its “go-teams” to investigate the accident.

The crash occurred shortly after the craft, dubbed SpaceShipTwo, separated from the jet aircraft that carried it aloft for its high-altitude launch, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

Branson said via Twitter that he was on his way to Mojave following the crash. “Thoughts with all @virgingalactic & Scaled,” he tweeted, referring to the company, Scaled Composites, which designed and built the spacecraft for Virgin.

George Whitesides, chief executive of Virgin Galactic, said he expected Branson to arrive by Saturday morning.

“Space is hard, and today was a tough day. We are going to be supporting the investigation as we figure out what happened today, and we’re going to get through it,” he told a news conference at the space port.

He added: “We believe we owe it to the folks who were flying these vehicles as well as the folks who have been working so hard on them, to understand this and to move forward, which is what we’ll do.”

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Statement from Virgin Galactic

Virgin Galactic’s partner Scaled Composites conducted a powered test flight of SpaceShipTwo earlier today. During the test, the vehicle suffered a serious anomaly resulting in the loss of the vehicle. The WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft landed safely. Our first concern is the status of the pilots, which is unknown at this time. We will work closely with relevant authorities to determine the cause of this accident and provide updates as soon as we are able to do so.

Press conference statement from George Whitesides, CEO of Virgin Galactic, Friday 31st October 2014:

“Space is hard and today was tough day. We are going to be supporting the investigation and we are going to get through it. The future rests in many ways on hard days like this but we owe it to the folks who were flying the vehicles and working so hard to understand this and to move forward.”