China has sent its first woman into space on a mission to dock with an orbiting station, the latest step in an ambitious programme to go to the moon and on to Mars.

Photo: China's first female astronaut Liu Yang, waves during a sending off ceremony before she departs for the Shenzhou 9 spacecraft rocket launch pad at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Jiuquan, China, Saturday, June 16, 2012. China will send its first woman and two other astronauts into space Saturday to work on a temporary space station for about a week, in a key step toward becoming only the third nation to set up a permanent base in orbit. (Photo by Ng Han Guan/AP Photo)

“Solar Impulse is a European long-range solar powered plane project being undertaken by Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg. The project eventually hopes to succeed in the first circling of the earth with a piloted fixed-wing aircraft using only solar power. The first aircraft, bearing the Swiss aircraft registration code of HB-SIA, is a single-seater, capable of taking off under its own power, and intended to remain airborne up to 36 hours. This aircraft first flew an entire diurnal solar cycle, including nearly 9 hours of night flying, in a 26-hour flight on 7–8 July 2010”. – Wikipedia


Photo: Workers prepare the Solar Impulse airplane HB-SIA for a first runway test on November 19, 2009 in Dubendorf, Switzerland. Solar Impulse chairman Bertrand Piccard, psychatrist and aeronaut, who made the first non-stop round-the-world balloon flight, and CEO and former fighter pilot Andrй Borschberg plan a round-the-world flight, driven only by solar energy, for 2012. (Photo by Johannes Simon/Getty Images)

REUTLINGEN, GERMANY - NOVEMBER 17: Students hang out finished parchment leather at the LGR (Lederinstitut Gerberschule Reutlingen) tannery school on November 17, 2010 in Reutlingen, Germany. Even in early antiquity and up their hair or dried goat and sheep skins were used as material for documents. In the small Asian city Pergamon these skins were processed in large quantities for this purpose, so they formed the main trading arm of the city, of which the name is parchment is derived. In medieval times, reached the parchment is of great importance, it was such as France's production under the supervision of the University of Paris. Even now, important documents, placed on their unlimited shelf life as possible large value (eg diplomas, addresses, memory, writings, documents for primary and keystones) written on parchment...

The buffalo bull charges, on March 23, 2014, in Addo Elephant National Park, South Africa. A young elephant calf tried to attack an old buffalo bull and was taught a lesson it will never forget. The calf was with its herd at a watering hold Addo Elephant National park, South Africa, when the buffalo ventured towards the water. The elephant ran towards the buffalo but the larger animal picked up the young calf and tossed it four metres in the air. Luckily, the elephant was not hurt, but its pride was seriously injured. (Photo by Conrad Cramer/Barcroft Media)

“What did I know about Chechnya before last week? For someone who grew up in the 1990s the very word Chechnya meant a string of grainy images on TV showing people in battered camouflage outfits, shooting at each other amid destruction and ruin. Fear, wahhabis, Shamil Basayev, terrorism, mountains: these were the words that used to spring to my mind when someone mentioned Chechnya”. – Maxim Shemetov. Photo: Special forces officers stand guard during a government-organised event marking Chechen language day in the centre of the Chechen capital Grozny April 25, 2013. (Photo by Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)

Jean-François Leroy launched Visa Pour l’Image, the international photojournalism festival, in Perpignan in 1989. Before heading up the festival, Leroy was shooting reportage for the agency Sipa Press and also working for Photo-Reporter, Le Photographe, Photo-Revue and Photo Magazine. He is the chairman of the company Images Evidence. Photo: 2008 Visa d'or Feature: Brent Stirton. Conservation Rangers from an Anti-Poaching unit work with locals to evacuate the bodies of four Mountain Gorrillas killed in mysterious circumstances in the park, July 24, 2007, Virunga National Park, Eastern Congo. (Photo by Brent Stirton/Exclusive by Getty Images)

French artist Thomas Lamadieu, also know as Roots Art, must really love looking at the sky. Every time he looks up, Thomas sees a potential canvas where the building rooftops frame the sky. He photographs it and uses the odd sky shapes to create whimsical line drawings. “My artistic aim is to show a different perception of urban architecture and the everyday environment around us, what we can construct with a boundless imagination,” says Thomas. (Photo by Thomas Lamadieu)