Rebirth of the British space program

This video is an eight minute documentary recounting the development and successful flight of PARIS (Paper Airplane Released Into Space). The mission was completed on an undisclosed day during 2010, and the video posted to YouTube in November 2011

PARIS was the culmination of two year's effort by The Register Special Projects Division. Some may be be more familiar with it as the "black ops department of IT/science website" The Register. The publication's logo is black and wide, depicting the side profile of a bird-of-prey.

The Register is a British publication. The aircraft was aptly named Vulture 1. Oddly, the acronym chose for the project, PARIS being in France, is not addressed.

Vulture 1

PARIS is not a parody. Although the documentary is a bit humorous, PARIS did succeed in attaining sufficient altitude such that the curvature of Earth was clearly visible. The PARIS mission achieved a maximum altitude three times greater than that of any prior paper airplane flight. Vulture 1 landed about 100 miles from the launch site.

Lego fans should make sure to look closely at the pilot.

Watch in "full-fat, high-definition" format, as suggested by the accompanying Register article, El Reg premieres PARIS.

Additional details

Some relevant questions and answers follow:

• Why not put a small camera on the plane? They tried but couldn't get a camera sufficiently small and light enough. 
• Is the entire descent viewable somewhere? Afraid not; even if they could have found a small, lightweight camera, none had adequate battery power to go the distance.
• How did they overcome the 100 mile winds Vulture 1 experienced during flight, given it was made of paper and straw? The wind wasn't a problem, as the parachute landing balloon and the plane drifted with the wind, thus weren't really subject to any great force. A more serious problem for the mission was the cold temperature, about -60 degrees C at the chilliest.
• What was the entire budget for the project? About £9k. That was for everything, including travel. 

The mission launch and landing were in Spain. That's because the Register Special Projects Bureau is based there.

Addenda

No further El Reg special projects were captured on their YouTube channel since 2012; however, 54 past videos are still available for viewing.

I am not aware of any original British space program, which is suggested by The Register's reference to this mission as "the return".