“SpaceShipOne was a suborbital air-launched spaceplane that completed the first manned private spaceflight in 2004. That same year, it won the US$10 million Ansari X Prize and was immediately retired from active service. Its mothership was named “White Knight”. Both craft were developed and flown by Mojave Aerospace Ventures, which was a joint venture between Paul Allen and Scaled Composites, Burt Rutan's aviation company. Allen provided the funding of approximately US$25 million”. – Wikipedia

Photo: A chase plane follows SpaceShipOne after it reached a height of 62 miles in the first non-governmental flight to leave the Earth's atmosphere on June 21, 2004 in Mojave, California. SpaceShipOne spacecraft was carried to a height of 50,000 by the twin-turbojet high-altitude research aircraft, “White Knight”, where it was launched for its final climb. The space effort was funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and headed by aerospace engineer Burt Rutan. (Photo by Jim Campbell-Pool/Getty Images)

This picture taken on February 18, 2017 shows a customer holding a crested black macaque in Tomohon market in northern Sulawesi, Indonesia. Authorities and activists are stepping up efforts to persuade villagers on Sulawesi island to stop consuming the critically endangered crested black macaques, one of many exotic creatures that form part of the local indigenous community' s diet. The macaque' s meat is prized by the ethnic Minahasan people, a largely Christian group in the world' s most populous Muslim- majority country, who have no reservation about eating exotic animals, unlike Indonesia' s Islamic communities. (Photo by Bay Ismoyo/AFP Photo)

In this photo submitted by the Washington Post tilted “The Moment Time Stopped”, survivors piled bodies of the dead outside for weeks after earthquake on January 14, 2010 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck in 2010, and the Haitian government has said more than 300,000 people were killed. The exact toll is unknown because there was no systematic effort to count bodies among the chaos and destruction. (Photo by Carol Guzy/AP Photo/The Washington Post)

Members of the media film as a ranger performs a post mortem on the carcass of a rhino after it was killed for its horn by poachers at the Kruger national park in Mpumalanga province August 27, 2014. Rhino poachers in South Africa now risk giving themselves away when they shoot thanks to a high-tech, gunfire-detection system being piloted in the country's flagship Kruger National Park. The stakes are high, for rhinos are being slain in escalating numbers for their prized horns, alarming both conservationists and the government since wildlife in South Africa is an important tourist draw. (Photo by Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters)

Karsten Thielker, a Pulitzer Prize-winning German photographer with The Associated Press who covered human suffering in conflict zones around the globe, has died at the age of 54. Thielker died on October 3 in Berlin of esophageal cancer, his wife Janna Ressel said. Here: A wounded Russian soldier, who has been evacuated with his comrades, weeps in a helicopter on his way out of Grozny on Friday, February 3, 1995, as the fighting in the Chechen capital continues. The massive Russian force that invaded Chechnya has taken very heavy losses against a small but determined guerrilla force. (Photo by Karsten Thielker/AP Photo/File)

Merit Prize Winner: “A Well Earned Rest in the Sahara”. This photo of Moussa Macher, our Tuareg guide, was taken at the summit of Tin-Merzouga, the largest dune (or erg) in the Tadrat region of the Sahara desert in southern Algeria. Moussa rested while waiting for us to finish our 45-minute struggle to the top. It only took ten minutes of rolling, running, and jumping to get back down. The Tadrat is part of the Tassili N'Ajjer National Park World Heritage area, famous for its red sand and engravings and rock paintings of cattle, elephants, giraffes, and rhinos that lived there when the climate was milder. Photo location: Summit of Tin-Merzouga, Tadrat, Tassili N'Ajjer National Park, Algeria. (Photo and caption by Evan Cole/National Geographic Photo Contest)

Dancers from the McLoughlin school in Glasgow, Scotland put on make-up as they get ready to participate in the 2022 World Irish Dancing Championships on its 50th anniversary, in Belfast, Northern Ireland on April 14, 2022. (Photo by Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters)

Celebrities arrive to the screening of Netflix's “Our Little Secret” at The Paris Theatre on November 18, 2024 in New York City, New York, USA. Pictured: American actress and singer-songwriter lindsay lohan. (Photo by Ouzounova/Splash News and Pictures)