Space Age

A Chinese probe carrying samples from the far side of the Moon started its journey back to Earth on Tuesday, the country's space agency said — a world first and a major achievement for Beijing's space programme.

The ascender module of the Chang'e-6 probe "lifted off from lunar surface" and entered a preset orbit around the Moon, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) said.

Authorities were investigating on July 18 whether a cylindrical object about the size of a small car that washed up on a remote Australian beach is space junk from a foreign rocket.

Police had cordoned off the barnacle-encrusted object after it was discovered at Green Head about 250 kilometers north of the city of Perth late on July 16.

Astronomy experts say they originally misread the secrets of the night sky last month: It turns out that a rocket expected to crash into the Moon in early March was built by China, not SpaceX.

A rocket will indeed strike the lunar surface on March 4, but contrary to what had been announced, it was built not by Elon Musk's company, but by Beijing, experts now say.

The US Government denied a protest by Jeff Bezos' private space company, Blue Origin against NASA's decision to award Elon Musk's SpaceX a 2.9-billion-dollar contract to take the next two US astronauts to the moon.

In April, NASA awarded the contract, part of a programme aiming to return astronauts to the moon by 2024, to SpaceX over Blue Origin and Dynetics.

Scientists from the Institute of Mechanics at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IMEh-BAS) are working on creating a multiple-use rocket system that will be cheaper, safer for the environment, and more efficient than existing US "recycling" missiles.

In line with its space program, the Chinese space agency plans to build a reuseable missile, super-heavy rocket and space shuttle over the next 20 years.

The first goal is Next Generation Chanchion to be launched by 2020. Its purpose is to use it as a cheap light rocket to extract relatively small satellites in low-Earth orbit.