Everything We Know About the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo Crash

Virgin Galactic has suffered what is possibly the worst tragedy to hit the private space industry after one of its test flights crashed in the Mojave desert, killing one pilot and injuring the other.

SpaceShipTwo, a six-seater spaceship designed to take thrill-seeking tourists to suborbital space as soon as January 2015, was being tested with a new mix of fuel.

The problem started roughly two minutes after SpaceShipTwo detached from its carrier aircraft, White Knight Two, and fired up its rockets. White Knight Two had been flying for roughly an hour.

The second pilot had what "appeared to be major injuries," according to Donny Youngblood, the Kern County, Calif., sheriff who responded to the incident.

"We don't know really what that means yet," he said. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the family."

A company called Scaled Composites, which is contracted out by Virgin Galactic, was operating the test, and both pilots were employed by that company, not Virgin.

Witnesses say they saw the ship's engines fire up, then stop, then fire again, before the ship broke apart and fell from the sky in pieces. No one associated with Virgin Galactic, the Mojave Air and Space Port, or Scaled Composites could say what, exactly, went wrong.

George Whitesides, CEO of Virgin Galactic said that the company would press on toward putting people into space.

"Space is hard, and today was a tough day," he said. "We are going to be supporting the investigation as we figure out what happened today, and we're going to get through it."

"The future rests in many ways on hard, hard days like this," he added. "But 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."

This isn't the first fatal explosion associated with Scaled Composites and SpaceCraftTwo. Back in 2007, three Scaled Composites employees died in a "nitrous oxide flash explosion" while testing a rocket system for the ship.

"When we have a mishap from the test community, well the test community is very small and we are human and it hurts," Stuart Witt, CEO of the Mojave Air and Space Port said during a press conference."Our hearts, thoughts and prayers are with families of the victims."

It's a major setback for the commercial space travel company, and a reminder that the glamour of space comes with real danger.