Paper Aircraft Released Into Space


The PARIS project was a privately organised endeavour undertaken by various staff members of the information technology web site The Register to design, build, test, and launch a lightweight aerospace vehicle, constructed mostly of paper and similar structural materials, into the mid-stratosphere and recover it intact.
On 28 October 2010, the aircraft was successfully launched at - 17 miles up - setting a world record recognised by Guinness World Records at a location about west of Madrid, Spain, by a team of British space enthusiasts.
On 13 September 2014, a group of Civil Air Patrol cadets from Fox Valley Composite Squadron of the Illinois Wing, announced that it had broken El Reg Guinness World Record for the highest launch of a paper plane by releasing a substantial paper dart at.
On 24 June 2015, a club from Kesgrave High School in Suffolk, United Kingdom, achieved the world record for the highest altitude paper plane launch, reaching an altitude of.

Project

Staffers at The Register, inspired by the CU Spaceflight Nova 1 project, formally announced their intention to initiate a project of their own on 30 July 2009. The aircraft's name was selected by a poll of the readers of The Register. was subsequently named Vulture 1.
The use of the word "space" in the project's name refers to "near space," not "outer space", since it was not planned for the vehicle to ascend to an altitude above the Kármán line ; it is nevertheless a project that is closely related to the concept of private spaceflight.
Lester Haines, special projects editor at The Register, as part of his reporting on CU Spaceflight's Nova 1 mission in 2006, and at the behest of team member Carl Morland, mused that "El Reg might like to contribute something" as a payload to a future high-altitude balloon project, and invited the online magazine's readership to make suggestions as to what kind of payload package should be designed and built. After languishing for a few years in limbo, the balloon payload project was resurrected in July, 2009 and called PARIS, as a backronym from Paper Aircraft Released Into Space after Paris Hilton, the payload type having been suggested by readers in 2006.
The paper plane was successfully launched on 28 October 2010.

Future

, The Register was working on PARIS' successor, named LOHAN (short for "Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator", a balloon-launched rocket-powered aircraft.