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SPEARS joins the 19-mile-high club: Intimate snaps

Spaceplane test flight mission photos for your viewing pleasure

Defoliation required

When we got to the scene, we found the payload up a particularly tangly tree...

The payload up a tree

...which proved no match for Paul and his mighty pruning saw:

Paul saws down a tree in pursuit of the CHAV

After a bit of defoliation, the plane and payload could be gently extracted:

The plane dangling from the payload in the tree

The CHAV aircraft is extracted from the tree

The Picam continued to grab images throughout, and here's how our Playmonaut saw the rescue:

Montage of stills from the CHAV Picam as the aircraft is teased from the treetops

The aircraft was pretty well intact, as the following photos show. The chap in the background in the first snap is Philip Crump, who'd been following the flight live and nipped up from Southampton, arriving at the landing site before us and in time to see the whole shebang crash-land:

Anthony inspects the CHAV after recovery

The CHAV after recovery

Having recovered the plane and payload, the LOHAN team posed for a commemorative group shot:

The LOHAN team poses after the flight

Actually, they posed for two in quick succession, leading one wag to create this animated gif:

Animated gif of the LOHAN team

We couldn't help feel we needed some music to go with that, so try this for size:

Radio RTFM Episode 4

Lovely. Thanks to everyone who participated in a successful and entertaining mission. ®


Further LOHAN resources:

  • New to LOHAN? Try this mission summary for enlightenment.
  • You can find full LOHAN coverage right here.
  • Join the expert LOHAN debate down at Reg forums.
  • All the LOHAN and Paper Aircraft Released Into Space (PARIS) vids live on YouTube.
  • For our SPB photo archive, proceed directly to Flickr.
  • We sometimes indulge in light consensual tweeting, as you can see here.

LOHAN - A Special Projects Bureau production in association with...

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