Richard Branson on his way to rocket crash scene

By WTOP Staff
October 31, 2014 | 5:28 PM

MOJAVE, Calif. (AP) — British billionaire Richard Branson is headed to California’s Mojave Desert after a Virgin Galactic space tourism rocket exploded and crashed, killing one person and seriously injuring another.

A tweet from Branson’s Twitter account thanked people for their messages of support and said he was “flying to Mojave immediately to be with the team.”

Officials and witnesses say Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo exploded Friday after taking off on a test flight. No other details were immediately available.

Branson is the founder of Virgin Galactic. The company is planning to launch space tourism flights from the quarter-billion-dollar Spaceport America in southern New Mexico.

School bus emergency? Fairfax County students have a plan to handle it

By Heather Gustafson
August 21, 2026 | 10:05 PM

This story is part of WTOP’s 2026 Back to School coverage. The wheels on the bus will soon be going round and round again in Fairfax County, Virginia, and some of its young riders are learning what to do if there’s an emergency on the way to school. The annual Safety Patrol Training Camp, hosted by Fairfax County Public Schools' Office of Transportation Services, combined hands-on exercises with classroom lessons to teach students how to keep calm during emergencies on buses. The training can feel remarkably realistic, with overturned school buses on their side or completely upside down in the middle of the county bus depot. Other buses, right side up, fill with smoke that is water-based but mimics the intensity of a bus overheating.

Related Stories