A world-first launch from the far side of the moon this week showcased China's progress in space, and Beijing now wants its commercial sector to catch up to rivals such as Elon Musk's SpaceX.

Chinese companies lag far behind American frontrunners led by SpaceX, which plans to launch Starship, a massive prototype rocket that may one day send humans to Mars, on Thursday.

The gap is narrowing, however, as Beijing realizes the value a solid commercial sector can add to its existing capabilities, experts told AFP.

It could even become similar to the development of electric vehicles where EV pioneer Tesla, also founded by Musk, was an early mover in China but now faces fierce competition from a host of homegrown rivals, said analyst Chen Lan.

SpaceX's massive Starship rocket achieved its first ever splashdown during a test flight Thursday, in a major milestone for the prototype system that may one day send humans to Mars.

Sparks and debris flew off the spaceship as it came down over the Indian Ocean northwest of Australia, dramatic video captured by an onboard camera showed, even as it succeeded in its goal of surviving atmospheric re-entry.

A pair of NASA astronauts have finally taken their historic ride on Boeing's CST-100 Starliner making its first-ever human spaceflight on the morning of June 5.

Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Sunita "Suni" Williams were back for a third time in a month once again taking a ride out to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station's Space Launch Complex 41 to climb on board the spacecraft sitting atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket that lifted off at 10:52 a.m. to take the pair to the International Space Station.

"Let's get going," said Wilmore minutes before launch. "Let's put some fire in this rocket and let's push it to the heavens where all these tough Americans have prepared it to be."

The pair are flying the Crew Flight Test mission, a followup to two uncrewed test flights of Starliner, the first of which came in 2019. That mission was a partial failure as it was not able to rendezvous with the ISS forcing a 2.5-year delay to Boeing's program to remedy hardware, software and management issues.

The second uncrewed test flight in 2022 made it to the ISS, but post-launch review and preparation for the CFT brought further delays with more hardware issues popping up.