Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has spent the last six years working on a giant aircraft capable of launching rockets to space. Today, his company Stratolaunch Systems literally rolled that plane out of its hangar in the Mojave Desert for the first time ever.

A local farmer Theophilus Mwendwa runs through a swarm of desert locusts to chase them away in the bush near Enziu, Kitui County, some 200km east of the capital Nairobi, Kenya, 24 January 2020. Large swarms of desert locusts have been invading Kenya for weeks, after having infested some 70 thousand hectares of land in Somalia which the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has termed the “worst situation in 25 years” in the Horn of Africa. FAO cautioned that it poses an “unprecedented threat” to food security and livelihoods in the region. (Photo by Dai Kurokawa/EPA/EFE)

The armadillo girdled lizard, Ouroborus cataphractus, is a lizard endemic to desert areas of southern Africa. It is also commonly known as typical girdled lizard, armadillo lizard, golden armadillo lizard, and armadillo spiny-tailed lizard.

Layers of breathtaking colour streak the rolling hills of this vast desert, making the landscape appear as though it has been tie-dyed. The natural phenomenon, nicknamed the “Painted Desert”, was formed when the area was once a river floodplain. Each colour corresponds to a different underground geological feature – rocks which have seemingly dyed the layers of earth above. Formed from volcanic activity, the hills at the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument in East Central Oregon, USA, are almost bursting with colour. Pictured: The colourful hills at the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument in East Central Oregon, USA. (Photo by Mark Brodkin/Solent News/SIPA Press)

An Iraqi camel herder poses in the desert of Samawa in Iraq's southern province of al-Muthanna on January 27, 2024. (Photo by Hussein Faleh/AFP Photo)

This aerial photograph taken on January 27, 2024 shows a camel in the desert of Samawa in Iraq's southern province of al-Muthanna. (Photo by Hussein Faleh/AFP Photo)

A participant tests his motorcycle ahead of the launch of the Rally of Morocco 2021, in the desert Zagora region, on October 7, 2021. The rally will be held from October 8 to 13, 2021. (Photo by Fadel Senna/AFP Photo)

A man dressed as Hindu god Shiva, smokes during an annual Hindu religious festival locally known as Shyam Baba festival in Ajmer, in the desert Indian state of Rajasthan, April 12, 2015. (Photo by Himanshu Sharma/Reuters)