UPDATE | Pilot killed as spacecraft for tourists explodes on test flight

MOJAVE, Calif. (AP) — A winged spaceship designed to take tourists on excursions beyond Earth's atmosphere exploded during a test flight today over the Mojave Desert, killing a pilot in the second fiery setback for commercial space travel in less than a week.

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo blew apart after being released from a carrier aircraft at high altitude, according to Ken Brown, a photographer who witnessed the explosion.

One pilot was found dead inside the spacecraft and another parachuted out and was flown by helicopter to a hospital, Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said.

The crash area was about 120 miles north of downtown Los Angeles and 20 miles from the Mojave Air and Space Port, where the flight originated.

British billionaire Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic, has been the front-runner in the fledgling race to give large numbers of paying civilians a suborbital ride that would let them experience weightlessness and see the Earth from the edge of space. Branson was expected to arrive in Mojave on Saturday, as were investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board.

"Space is hard, and today was a tough day," Virgin Galactic CEO President George Whitesides said. "The future rests in many ways on hard, hard days like this."