After last year's fatal crash, Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic will now test its new SpaceShipTwo rocket without its longtime aerospace partner that designed and built the first plane.

Since 2005, Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites, a firm famous in the industry for designing the aircraft that won the coveted X-Prize, had worked together to build and test SpaceShipTwo. Their goal: blasting wealthy tourists into space.

Scaled was conducting the rocket's test flight Oct. 31 when it broke apart over the Mojave Desert about 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles, killing one of the two pilots aboard.

The tests of the new spaceship, which is under construction in a hangar in Mojave, will be conducted by Virgin's own team of pilots, George Whitesides, the company's chief executive, confirmed Friday. Those tests are expected to begin later this year.

Scaled will still be connected to the project in some way, Whitesides said. "My guess is that we stay involved with Scaled for years to come."

Virgin Galactic is working on an aggressive schedule of construction and testing even as federal investigators continue their probe into what caused the plane to tear apart at more than 10 miles high.

Whitesides said he was confident about proceeding with the new spacecraft already 90% structurally complete because Virgin Galactic is involved in the investigation and has access to information about what went wrong.

The spacecraft has been modified based on the investigation's not-yet-public findings, he said, adding that he couldn't be more specific because of the ongoing probe.

In preliminary findings, the National Transportation Safety Board said that a video taken inside the cockpit showed that co-pilot Michael Alsbury prematurely unlocked the spacecraft's movable tail, which may have started the sequence of events that caused it to break up seconds later.

Alsbury did not move a second lever designed to move the tail, but it deployed anyway.

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Virgin Galactic to test new rocket without longtime aerospace partner