The vendors show the toy of snake at the Spring Festival Temple Fair for celebrating Chinese Lunar New Year of Snake at the Temple of Earth park on February 9, 2013 in Beijing, China. The Chinese Lunar New Year of Snake also known as the Spring Festival, which is based on the Lunisolar Chinese calendar, is celebrated from the first day of the first month of the lunar year and ends with Lantern Festival on the Fifteenth day. (Photo by Feng Li)

“The Dream Chaser is a planned crewed suborbital and orbital vertical-takeoff, horizontal-landing (VTHL) lifting-body spaceplane being developed by SpaceDev, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC). The Dream Chaser design is planned to carry seven people to and from low earth orbit. The vehicle would launch vertically on an Atlas V and land horizontally on conventional runways”. – Wikipedia

Photo: NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver talks during a press conference with Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser spacecraft in the background at the University of Colorado at Boulder on February 5, 2011 in Boulder, Colorado. Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser spacecraft is under development with support from NASA's Commercial Crew Development Program to provide crew transportation to and from low Earth orbit. NASA is helping private companies develop innovative technologies to ensure that the U.S. remains competitive in future space endeavors. (Photo by Bill Ingalls/NASA via Getty Images)

This watering hole is the social hub of the veldt; the scrubby grasslands that stretch across Namibia. The scorched earth supports sometimes fragile populations of magnificent wildlife – from endangered predators to plentiful herds of game. But these gentle giraffes and elephants need to be careful: lions don’t sleep at night, they hunt! The spectacular starscape above southern Africa is unchanged since explorers first mapped the continent. The photographer, Pietro Olivetta from Italy, said he had to be patient to capture these shots – but it was worth the wait. (Photo by Pietro Olivetta/Caters News)

Boats moored in the middle of Dal lake are silhouetted against the setting sun on January 15, 2018 in Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian administered Kashmir, India. Kashmir, the Muslim majority state, known as the “Paradise on Earth” has for centuries captured the imagination of many writers, poets and film makers and is integral to the tourist trade. Kashmir has been a contested land between nuclear neighbors India and Pakistan since 1947, the year both the countries attained freedom from the British rule. (Photo by Yawar Nazir/Getty Images)

Astronauts Nie Haisheng (C), Liu Boming (R) and Tang Hongbo are out of the return capsule of the Shenzhou-12 spaceship at the Dongfeng landing site in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on September 17, 2021. Three Chinese astronauts, the first sent to orbit for space station construction, have completed their three-month mission and returned to Earth safely on Friday. Photo by Lian Zhen/Xinhua News Agency)

As the official airline of Middle-earth, Air New Zealand has gone all out to celebrate the third and final film in The Hobbit Trilogy – The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. Starring Elijah Wood and Sir Peter Jackson; we're thrilled to unveil The Most Epic Safety Video Ever Made

Amateur astronomer Bill Snyder has been involved with astrophotography since 2007. Photo: The Cygnus Wall is in the southern area of NGC7000 also known as the North America Nebula. It is approximately 1800 light years from Earth, and is in the constellation Cygnus. The Wall is an energized shock front and contains the most concentrated star formations in the nebula. The size of the North America Nebula is about 4 full moons. (Photo and caption by Bill Snyder)

The moon is seen in its waxing gibbous stage as it rises behind the helicopter from the original Batman television show, which people can ride at the New Jersey State Fair, Saturday, June 22, 2013, in East Rutherford, N.J. The moon, which will reach its full stage on Sunday, is expected to be 13.5 percent closer to earth during a phenomenon known as supermoon. (Photo by Julio Cortez/AP Photo)