“A small British company with a dream of building a re-usable space plane has won an important endorsement from the European Space Agency (ESA) after completing key tests on its novel engine technology. Reaction Engines Ltd believes its Sabre engine, which would operate like a jet engine in the atmosphere and a rocket in space, could displace rockets for space access and transform air travel by bringing any destination on Earth to no more than four hours away”. – Chris Wickham via Reuters. Photo: Artist's impression of Skylon. (Photo by Reaction Engines Ltd)

A young boy walks to his school bus on a foggy day in Dubai on March 14, 2024. (Photo by Chris Whiteoak/The National)

A volcanic eruption at Mount Etna’s Vorgaine crater in Sicily, Italy on December 3, 2015. (Photo by Marco Restivo/Barcroft Media)

A girl carries a bag of recyclable items she collected from a landfill on the outskirts of Sanaa, Yemen November 16, 2016. (Photo by Mohamed al-Sayaghi/Reuters)

People run away as a building is toppled during a controlled demolition as part of an urban transformation in Ankara, Turkey, February 3, 2014. (Photo by Serap Doganyigit/Reuters)

Youth category winner: Symphony No 5 by Giacomo Redaelli (Italy). (Photo by Giacomo Redaelli/2019 Nature Photographer of the Year)

Abdulahi Yaroow, 13, smokes a cigarette while chewing khat at the same time in Mogadishu August 10, 2014. Grown on plantations in the highlands of Kenya and Ethiopia, tonnes of khat, or qat, dubbed “the flower of paradise” by its users, are flown daily into Mogadishu airport, to be distributed from there in convoys of lorries to markets across Somalia. Britain, whose large ethnic Somali community sustained a lucrative demand for the leaves, banned khat from July as an illegal drug. This prohibition jolted the khat market, creating a supply glut in Somalia and pushing down prices, to the delight of the many connoisseurs of its amphetamine-like high. (Photo by Thomas Mukoya/Reuters)

Clouds float over an open field January 3, 2007 in Shirley Heights, Antigua. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)