Durham, Toronto and Princeton Universities have teamed up with NASA and the Canadian Space Agency to build a new kind of astronomical telescope. SuperBIT flies above 99.5% of the Earth's atmosphere, carried by a helium balloon the size of a football stadium. The telescope will make its operational debut next April and when deployed should obtain high-resolution images rivaling those of the Hubble Space Telescope. Mohamed Shaaban, a Ph.D. student at the University of Toronto, will describe SuperBIT in his talk today (Wednesday 21 July) at the online RAS National Astronomy Meeting (NAM 2021).

Light from a distant galaxy can travel for billions of years to reach our telescopes. In the final fraction of a second, the light has to pass through the Earth's swirling, turbulent atmosphere. Our view of the universe becomes blurred.

The world's richest man Jeff Bezos, his brother, a Dutch teenager who is now the youngest ever astronaut and a barrier-breaking female US aviator who is now the oldest have now been to space.

Here is a brief look at the crew of Blue Origin's historic first human flight on Tuesday.

The tycoon, Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos, 57, left behind the planet where he made his vast fortune for a few minutes on a spaceship built by the company he founded in 2000, when he was still merely a single-digit billionaire.

Six years before that, he started a small online bookstore called Amazon.com out of his garage. Bezos' net worth is today estimated at more than $200 billion.

The wealthiest man on the planet Jeff Bezos spent a few minutes in space Tuesday on Blue Origin's first human mission, a key moment for a fledgling industry seeking to make the final frontier accessible to elite tourists.

"A very happy group of people in this capsule," said Bezos after the spaceship touched down in the west Texas desert following an 10-minute hop to the Karman line and back.

The four-member crew exchanged high-fives and hugged family who came to meet them at the landing site.

Earlier, the New Shepard capsule reached at an altitude of 66.5 miles (107 kilometers), allowing the passengers to experience weightlessness while admiring the curve of the Earth.

"It's dark up here," said barrier-breaking female aviator Wally Funk, who joined Bezos, his brother and 18-year-old Dutchman Oliver Daemen, who became the youngest ever astronaut.