Q&A with George Whitesides, CEO of Virgin Galactic

Richard Branson, the charismatic leader of Virgin Galactic and a driving force in the push to commercialize space travel, vowed to find out what caused the fatal crash of his company’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane, to learn from the tragedy and to press ahead with plans to carry paying customers into space.

Michel Denis, flight director for Europe’s ExoMars mission, spoke with Spaceflight Now on March 22 about the status of the spacecraft a week after its blastoff from Kazakhstan en route to the red planet.

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane crashed during a powered test flight over California’s Mojave Desert on Friday, leaving one pilot dead and another seriously injured.