The head of National Transportation Safety Board in the US has said that it may take up to a year to discover why a Virgin Galactic spaceship exploded over California.
Friday's explosion left one pilot dead and another seriously injured.
Christopher Hart said aircraft wreckage was spread over a wide area of the desert and the spaceship most likely broke up in mid-flight.
"When the debris field spans that large an areas we know there was an in-flight separation," said Mr Hart.
"If it had crashed together all the pieces would be close to each other but that spread of the data of the debris field tells us that it was an in-flight separation.
"Of course the question is then why did that happen, so that's what we are exploring, that's what are investigators are examining."
Federal officials are working with Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic team to open an investigation into Friday's crash.
Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo went down during a powered test flight, scattering debris over the Mojave Desert, 150km north of Los Angeles.
Michael Alsbury, 39, has been identified as the pilot who died in the crash, and the surviving pilot is Peter Siebold, 43.
Mr Alsbury, who was from Tehachapi, California, was a project engineer and test pilot at Scaled Composites, a Northrop Grumman Corp subsidiary that built and designed the spacecraft for Virgin Galactic.
Mr Siebold was piloting SpaceShipTwo on Friday and Mr Alsbury was serving as co-pilot, Scaled Composites said in a statement.
Mr Alsbury was flying for the ninth time aboard SpaceShipTwo, including serving as the co-pilot on its first rocket-powered test flight on 29 April 2013, according to his biography on the company's website.
He was found dead in the aircraft, Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said on Friday.
Mr Siebold parachuted from SpaceShipTwo and was found just over 1km from the fuselage, Mr Youngblood said.
He had moderate to major injuries and was taken by helicopter to Antelope Valley Hospital.
Mr Siebold was said to be alert and talking to his family and doctors yesterday.
He had been the pilot alongside Mr Alsbury on SpaceShipTwo's maiden test flight last year, according to the company's website.
Mr Hart said investigators have not yet interviewed Mr Siebold due to doctor's recommendations.
The acting NTSB chairman also said officials were not sure whether Mr Siebold tried to evacuate the spaceship.
He said: "We are not sure that one was able to eject. We know that one was out of the airplane, we don't how that pilot got out of the airplane.
"We know that there was a parachute that was found where that pilot was.
"We know that the other parachute was found undeployed. Why one was found out of the airplane and the other was not we do not yet know."
A team of investigators from the NTSB arrived at the crash site yesterday to begin piecing together what led to the accident.
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