Via The London Times, thrilling news from the final frontier:

“Britain’s space programme may have been in the doldrums since the disappearance of the Mars probe Beagle 2, but we are back in the race thanks to some soft-toy astronauts. Four teddy bears dressed in space suits designed by schoolchildren were launched into the stratosphere by students from Cambridge University’s space-flight club. From a weather balloon about 30km above the ground, the bears would have had a perspective of the stars in inky blackness and the dramatic curvature of the Earth far below had they been able to see. Fortunately, they were accompanied by a remote-control camera that relayed images to a laptop computer. After a flight lasting two hours and nine minutes, they gently parachuted back to Earth and were picked up from a field near Ipswich, 50 miles from the launch site.”