One pilot was killed and another seriously injured when Virgin Galactic's prototype commercial spaceship crashed in the desert on Friday.
The accident left debris from the test plane scattered across the desert near Mojave.
Virgin Galactic said its SpaceShipTwo craft had "experienced an in-flight anomaly".
The company later added: "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 SpaceShipTwo. WK2 landed safely."
No date has yet been set for the first commercial flight but hundreds of would-be space tourists have made down payments for the chance to fly.
Get the latest headlines http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
Subscribe to The Telegraph http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=telegraphtv
Like us on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/telegraph.co.uk
Follow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/telegraph
Follow us on Google+ https://plus.google.com/102891355072777008500/
Telegraph.co.uk and YouTube.com/TelegraphTV are websites of The Daily Telegraph, the UK's best-selling quality daily newspaper providing news and analysis on UK and world events, business, sport, lifestyle and culture.
