THIS RESEARCH IS CROWD-FUNDED: How do we pay for these flights? Actually, you pay for them. Readers of Spaceweather.com, mainly private individuals and small businesses, sponsor each and every research flight to the stratosphere. Our latest astrobiology launch was made possible by S2 Maui, a windsurf sail design company. Here is their logo sailing the thin air at 100,000 feet:



The logo is made of a new lightweight windsurf fabric called "SpaceLight," developed by S2 Maui's designer, Artur Szpunar, together with US-based sail cloth manufacturer, Dimension Polyant. Visiting the stratosphere was not only an opportunity to show S2 Maui's logo at the edge of space, but also a chance to expose the fabric to high doses of UV radiation at the top of Earth's atmosphere. "This was a valuable test of our new material in an appropriate environment," says Szpunar.