Investigators in Southern California trying to find out why an experimental spaceship crashed are wrapping up their work.
The US team has been in the Mojave Desert, around 120 miles north of Los Angeles, examining the wreckage of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo which broke apart last Friday.
Co-pilot Michael Alsbury was killed and pilot Peter Siebold seriously injured.
Virgin Galactic’s chief pilot is Caithness-born David Mackay, 57, who was not on the flight at the time of the accident.
Earlier this week, The Press and Journal told how Mr Mackay’s 91-year-old mother faced an agonising wait after hearing the news.
Sheila Mackay, of Helmsdale, Sutherland, said it was an “enormous relief” when her son called to tell her he was okay.
Mr Mackay is currently based at the company’s headquarters in New Mexico and has played a major role in the research and development of SpaceshipTwo.
He lefjoin Virgin Atlantic as a long-haul pilot, and was then approached by Virgin Galactic to become its chief pilot.
He relocated to California with his wife, Sue, and children, Duncan and Katharine, to work on the project.
The safety board will take months more to finish interviews and analysis of physical evidence from the crash site before publicly stating what it thinks the cause was.
SpaceShipTwo was destroyed after the feathering system that controls descent deployed prematurely and aerodynamic forces ripped it apart.
Virgin Galactic is building a replacement spaceship and says test flights could resume as early as next summer.