London, United Kingdom |Ascot took a financial hit by putting on Royal Ascot behind closed doors and lessons were learned for the Epsom Derby and Oaks, the next highlights of the racing calendar.

Royal Ascot went ahead without its crowds and well-dressed punters but the final winner's name, Who Dares Wins, seemed apt as most commentators concluded it had been a success in difficult circumstances with stringent health constraints. 

A winner for Queen Elizabeth II, Stradivarius's third successive Ascot Gold Cup and Nando Parrado -- at 150/1 the longest-priced winner in Royal Ascot's history -- were some of the on-track highlights.

The organisers of the Epsom Derby and Oaks have won permission to stage both races without spectators on July 4 as part of a seven-race card.

AFP Sport asked personalities from different walks of racing life what Ascot had proved to them, as England emerges from the coronavirus lockdown.

The racecourse manager

Ascot director of racing Nick Smith and his team added six races to the five-day programme and set up a super Saturday with three Group One races, switching two of them from earlier in the week. 

He said: "It has been a great, if strange week.

"Running six extra races seemed like the right thing to do in the environment we faced and were well supported

"Two wins for lady jockeys (Hayley Turner and Hollie Doyle) and a win and three seconds for America were amongst the many landmarks of the week."

The owner

Richard Morecombe, co-founder of Chelsea Thoroughbreds which has around 20 horses with a limit of 10 investors per horse, says potential owners may be put off buying horses if they are not allowed on the racecourse.

It is not all doom and gloom though.

"What would be good news going forward is if the extending of the programme at Royal Ascot is something they would keep," he said.

"By doing so it gives owners like us the opportunity of a genuine chance of a Royal Ascot winner.

"I don't think it dumbs down Ascot by having extra handicaps. Goodwood and York have non-championship races and they work very well." 

The trainer

Mark Johnston admitted he had a frustrating week but at least came away with his first win in the Royal Hunt Cup.

The 60-year-old -- the all-time record holder for training winners in the United Kingdom -- is a firm advocate of allowing owners back onto the racecourse.

"The only lesson we can take forward is, could we have more people at the racecourse? And that stable staff can stay overnight."

Although Johnston was himself laid low with coronavirus for a fortnight earlier this year, he believes the risk to staff being at a course is low.

"It is all about perception but the risk of catching it (COVID-19) is so negligible there is no reason not to have more people on the racecourse," he said. 

The jockey

Jim Crowley rode a career-best six winners at a meeting where you would "take your hand off" to have just one.

The 34-year-old Englishman was only denied top jockey honours by Frankie Dettori. The Italian's last-day treble saw him also finish on six and pip Crowley due to more placed finishes.

Crowley said he can't wait for spectators to return, even if some of his rides such as top sprinter Battaash -- who won the King's Stand Stakes after finishing runner-up in 2018 and 2019 --benefited from the lack of them as he "can boil over."

"I will say that a lot more people tuned in on television," he said, referring to the one million who watched Stradivarius win the Gold Cup.

"A lot of the people who go racing never see a race as their priority is the social aspect. Those who tuned in did so for the right reasons.

"People should be watching the racing and hopefully the viewers included a new audience."

The bookmaker

William Woodhams, CEO of Fitzdares, had a rollercoaster week -- just one pound was laid on his firm's books for Nando Parrado on Saturday but then they took a hit in the next race.

He said France offers hope for getting people back onto the track.

"France will allow a limit of 5,000 people onto racetracks from July 11," he said.

"I believe Glorious Goodwood (July 28 - August 1) will allow owners back and that would be a wonderful thank you for them keeping the industry afloat through the lockdown.

"It would be a refreshing change for them from being interviewed via Zoom in the corner of their kitchen." 

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Berlin, Germany | AFP | The 30th anniversary of the removal of the Checkpoint Charlie border crossing between the communist East and capitalist West Berlin during the Cold War.

A designated crossing for foreigners and allied troops, Checkpoint Charlie was also used for prisoner swaps between East and West.

Thirty years on, the site has been turned into a tourist trap and authorities are mulling its future.

Here are five things to know about the iconic checkpoint that James Bond, played by Roger Moore, passed through in the 1983 film "Octopussy": 

- Three checkpoints -

In fact, there never was a Charlie: The checkpoint was named after the letter C in NATO's phonetic alphabet. 

Checkpoint Alpha, the largest and most important border crossing, was located at Helmstedt between Berlin and Hanover, while Checkpoint Bravo was at Dreilinden in southwestern Berlin.

However, Checkpoint Charlie was the most important crossing point for foreigners and the Allied forces.

- Escape attempts -

Checkpoint Charlie was the site of various daring attempts by East Germans to escape to the West, since it was one of the only gaps in the mass of concrete and barbed wire that made up the Berlin Wall.

In April 1962, Austrian Heinz Meixner managed to smuggle his East German girlfriend and her mother across the border in a rented Austin-Healey convertible by removing the windshield and speeding underneath the checkpoint's vehicle barrier. 

In another famous escape, photographer Horst Beyer staged a photoshoot during which he fled across the border.

- Tuba player -

Every Berliner knows his face and millions of tourists have taken their picture with him.

The soldier in the picture at the site of Checkpoint Charlie today is a former US army tuba player called Jeff Harper. He was 22 when he was photographed as part of a series to commemorate the last Allied soldiers in Berlin in 1994. 

His portrait was later chosen to hang alongside an image of a Soviet soldier at Checkpoint Charlie.

- Tank stand-off -

In October 1961, combat-ready US and Soviet tanks stood facing each other for 16 hours at Checkpoint Charlie in one of the tensest confrontations of the Cold War.

Deployed as part of a border dispute, 10 tanks from each side faced each other just 100 metres (yards) apart, their engines rumbling and clouds of thick smoke filling the air.

Thankfully, a third world war was averted after US president John F Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev finally agreed to withdraw the tanks.

- Future plans -

In the years since German unification in 1990, Checkpoint Charlie has turned into a sort of "Disneyland" of history, with vendors selling fake Red Army fur hats and gas masks and people dressed in US military uniforms charging tourists for snapshots.

A debate has been simmering for some time in Berlin about how to develop the area.

After a row over private investors' building plans including for a Hard Rock Hotel at the site, city authorities have drawn up more restrictive planning rules for the area -- including limiting the height of new buildings as well as requiring 30 percent of apartments to be social housing.

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Paris, France | Balenciaga said that it intends to enter the elite ranks of Paris haute couture -- more than half a century after the founder of the storied fashion house staged his last couture show.

Despite being called "the king of couture," the Spanish-born designer Cristobal Balenciaga spent years feuding with the French Federation of Haute Couture, whose members decide which houses are allowed to call themselves haute couture under French law.

The Basque creator, whom Christian Dior deemed "the master of us all," pointedly held his shows a month after the official couture presentations, before shutting his workshop in 1968.

But Balenciaga's current designer Demna Gvasalia told Le Figaro that "relaunching haute couture is my mission for this house."

"This is where we came from, and after 50 years we're coming back," he said.

The federation told AFP they could not confirm if Balenciaga was being admitted to the elite body, which currently counts just 16 haute couture practitioners.

Haute couture shows are held twice a year, in January and July, separately from the presentations of ready-to-wear collections.

Gvasalia, the Georgian-born provocateur, might seem an unlikely choice to spearhead a revival of painstaking and time-consuming craftmanship at the esteemed brand, now owned by French luxury conglomerate Kering.

But the founder of the poverty-chic brand Vetements -- known for subverting expectations with items such as a $2,000 leather version of Ikea's iconic blue shopping bag -- said he was already dedicating one day a week to couture at Balenciaga, which he joined in 2015.

His workshop will be at the same address on the Avenue George V where Balenciaga began plying his trade in Paris in 1937.

"Haute couture implies certain constraints but it also allows a unique aesthetic freedom," Gvasalia told Le Figaro.

"This project is also my response to the question: 'What is luxury today?'" he said.

"I know that fashion wants to present itself as inclusive, but not everything can be available to everybody. And that's the way it should be."

His announcement comes just days after French legend Jean Paul Gaultier said he would present his final haute couture show on Wednesday, capping a 50-year career that saw him explode the boundaries of what fashion could be.

The flamboyant creator said he would bow out with a "big party" before embarking on an as-yet unspecified new project.

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Paris, France | Paris fashion fortnight began last week with an apocalyptic warning.

"Our Mother Earth will not be able to support life, we will not be able to breathe... If we don't open our hearts and our minds, it's the End," a disembodied voice intoned as hot Hollywood label Rhude made its Paris debut.

The very next show, Phipps' "Treehugger, Tales of the Forest", was teased on Instagram with pictures of rescued koalas from the Australian wildfires.

It was another sign that fashion now sees itself on the climate change frontline.

But when AFP questioned Rhude designer Rhuigi Villasenor backstage, he admitted there was nothing sustainable about his collection.

He had found the stirring speech on the internet the day before, and didn't know who had made it.

But he insisted his clothes were  "timeless" and would "live through ages and trends".

Campaigners say such "greenwashing" is typical of an industry "that is talking the talk but not walking the walk" on sustainability.

While Rhude is a young brand, it has a starry roster of clients from Justin Bieber to rapper ASAP Rocky and Ellen DeGeneres.

Yet some of the most fabled luxury houses in fashion -- even some whose designers are activists for change -- have found themselves caught short.

- Luxury labels in dock -

Dior's last women's show played hard on its eco-credentials. Set amid trees that were later used to create urban parks, it went heavy on eco-friendly hemp and raffia with models in Greta Thunberg plaits.

Designer Maria Grazia Chiuri told AFP that nature and "humans need to live together if humanity is to survive."

"It is not just about image but action," she added.

Weeks later a damning report by the Changing Markets Foundation on toxic pollution caused by viscose production put Dior and a swathe of other luxury labels including Prada, Versace, Fendi, Armani, Miu Miu and Marc Jacobs in the dock.

Dolce & Gabbana came in for particular criticism.

The much-vaunted biodegradable fabric -- which often is used like silk, has been seen as a silver bullet for fashion's eco woes, a way to wean it off synthetic fibres that come from the petrochemical industry.

While some fast fashion groups like H&M, C&A and ASOS -- which luxury labels blame for fashion's pollution and runaway overproduction -- were praised for making progress in the in-depth "Dirty Fashion Disrupted" study, designer labels were excoriated.

"Three quarters of the luxury brands we looked at were failing to take any meaningful action to clean up their viscose supply chain," its author Urska Trunk told AFP.

Viscose, which comes from wood pulp, is now the third most used fibre in the world and "genuinely has the potential to be a sustainable", Trunk added.

"Unfortunately most of it is still produced in a very dirty process," causing water pollution and an alarming array of mental illnesses, strokes and cancer close to factories in India, China and Indonesia.

While she lauded British designer Stella McCartney for her transparency and ambition, "with most of the other luxury brands it is lip service, mostly hollow words... And that is a major concern."

- Spin but little change -

The report is the foundation's second tracking whether brands were cleaning up their act. With only a handful of firms producing almost all of the world's viscose, Trunk said pressure from brand could make "a massive difference".

For Christie Miedema, of the Dutch-based Clean Clothes Campaign, brands have become expert as "eco messaging" with "one-off collections or clever initiatives to make it looking like they are doing something" without actually changing the way they operate.

Versace, which came bottom only to Walmart in the Changing Markets table, made the front pages by sending Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen to New York's Met Gala in a "100 percent green eco-dress" while Prada -- which is also deep in its "red zone" -- got admiring media coverage for their Re-Nylon "eco handbag".

Dior is part of LVMH, the world's biggest luxury group.

Unlike its main rival Kering and 24 other major clothing companies, LVMH pointedly refused to sign up to "The Fashion Pact" on fighting climate change at the G7 summit last year.

- 'They will be found out' -

Owner Bernard Arnault -- the world's richest man -- later criticised teenage activist Greta Thunberg for "surrendering to total catastrophism" even as he appointed McCartney his personal advisor on sustainability in September.

Kering -- which controls Gucci and Saint Laurent -- has since said it has gone carbon neutral and has vowed to halve greenhouse gas emissions in its supply chain within five years.

Joel Hazan, luxury goods analyst at the Boston Consulting Group, said the industry "had passed a tipping point", and warned those who pretend to embrace sustainability would be found out.

"The demographics will make the difference," he told AFP. "Eight out of 10 millennials expect labels to play a strong part socially and environmentally."

Since almost all growth in luxury goods in the next five years "is predicted to come from millennials, brands have no choice" but to change, Hazan argued.

Indeed Vetements, the hot youthful rebel brand which has shaken Paris fashion in recent years, used its men's show to pour scorn on its elders with slogans such as "Cutting down the bullshit", "Fully sustainable show" and "It costs $0 to be a nice person".

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London, United Kingdom |Despite her tiny stature, Sinead Burke has become a force to be reckoned with in the world of fashion, pushing for designs to become accessible for all.

The 29-year-old Irishwoman, just 1.05 metres (three feet and five inches) tall, has not gone unnoticed at London Fashion Week.

Burke was in the front row at the Victoria Beckham and Roksanda catwalk shows, sitting just a few places away from Anna Wintour, the high priestess of fashion.

She cuts a surprising figure amidst the models, movie actors and pop stars -- yet she too sports luxurious outfits.

Before the Beckham show, Burke was wearing some of the former Spice Girls singer's creations, donning a canary yellow blouse decorated with a black flower, and a straight brown skirt.

But there is plenty more in her wardrobe that she could have chosen from.

"There is some Gucci, some Prada, some Dior, some Balenciaga, some Victoria Beckham, some Christopher Kane, some Burberry," she told AFP.

How did the school teacher from Dublin end up on the cover of Britain's Vogue magazine?

The journey started in March 2017 with a TED Talk -- the online ideas conferences -- and a speech entitled "Why design should include everyone".

Her talk went over the obstacles she faced in daily life in the designed world, from the height of locks on toilet doors to the available range of shoe sizes.

The video, which has been viewed 1.4 million times, seems to have triggered some changes.

"That seemed to be a moment when people were listening to design and accessibility and thinking about this industry in a different way for the first time, so there has been progress," said Burke.

- Vogue cover star -

Burke did not leave it at that. At London Fashion Week in February 2018, she introduced herself to British Vogue editor-in-chief Edward Enniful, tugging on his sleeve at a Burberry show.

Then she ended up on the cover of the magazine's September 2019 issue, chosen by guest editor Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex as one of 15 female "forces for change".

Top designers have created custom-made outfits for her -- something she considers a "huge privilege and an honour" -- but that was never her goal.

"What I want is just that people understand disability as customisation, which the fashion industry already is familiar with, and make that a tool that is available for everybody," she said.

More than just the symbolism of disabled people on catwalks, she wants long-term systemic change so that "an 18-year-old who is at university, who studies marketing, who is a little person like me, can understand that he can work for Victoria Beckham or for Gucci".

Burke hosts a podcast where she conducts interviews on the theme of identity and difference.

She has also collaborated with the Open Style Lab, an organisation which works on creating wearable clothes for people with disabilities without compromising on style or comfort.

"The idea of this is not necessarily that that collection would be marketable and commercial," she said.

More so that the young designers would learn from working with "different types of bodies" and take that forward into the companies they go on to work for.

"Change has to happen at the most senior level with the chief executive and creative directors but also with the new generation" of designers, said Burke.

Little by little, representation and visibility of people with disabilities was improving, she said, citing the example of 18-year-old Aaron Philip -- the first transsexual, black, disabled model to have joined the books of a large modelling agency, Elite.

There is still a long way to go to transform "the most exclusive industry in the world", she said, though she remains optimistic.

"I thought I would be a teacher for ever and here we are, in London Fashion Week!"

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London, United Kingdom |Freddie Mercury, Yves Saint Laurent and George Lucas were all seduced by the charms of the kimono, whose evolution from medieval times in Japan will be on show at a major exhibition in London.

The kimono has been worn by Jedi knights in Lucas's "Star Wars" movie saga, and David Bowie in his futuristic alter ego Ziggy Stardust.

"It's very fluidity is, I think, what makes it such an iconic inspiration," said Anna Jackson, curator of the "Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk" exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, which opens on Saturday.

V and A director Tristram Hunt said: "When we think about fashion, the kimono might not be the first item that comes to mind."

The exhibition, which runs to June 21, "challenges this perception".

- Elegance and show -

A triptych consisting of a garment from 1800, a modern one by Japanese designer Jotaro Saito and a third from 2007 by Britain's John Galliano for Dior "shows how the fashion of the kimono has been translated beyond cultural and geographic boundaries", said Hunt.

The kimono influence has even reached space, with the plain robes worn by Alec Guinness as "Star Wars" Jedi master Obi-Wan Kenobi forming part of the exhibition.

More than 100 items show off the contrasting variations on what was once a simple robe.

The oldest, dating from around 1660 to 1680, has sober maple leaves embroidered on water motifs.

The most recent is a skateboarder-style long, hooded coat made in 2019 by the young designer Milligan Beaumont.

"The very simplicity of (the) kimono's shape means that it can be taken apart and reconstructed in a myriad of ways," Jackson told AFP, explaining the enduring fascination with kimonos across the centuries and continents.

"For many people it's the sense of the drape from the shoulders. For others, it's the sash in the middle.

"For others, it's about the sumptuous surfaces, the amazing patterns and how they're combined in unusual ways."

- 'Genderless garment' -

The kimono, worn by both men and women, began to appear in Europe thanks to the Dutch East India Company, which was allowed to trade with Japan despite the isolationist policy of its Edo period (1615-1868) that restricted contact with foreigners.

In the 19th century, Japan began making kimonos with French silk, and Europe began making kimonos from Japanese fabrics.

Since then, it has not stopped influencing international fashion.

Over time, the traditional embroidery depicting reeds, cherry trees, water lilies, birds or dragons became sophisticated geometric or even psychedelic patterns.

French designer Jean Paul Gaultier shortened the robes to Bermuda shorts length in a fiery red 1998 creation for pop star Madonna.

Alexander McQueen widened the neck and shortened the sleeves in 1997 for Bjork -- a look as experimental and avant-garde as the Icelandic singer herself.

In 1958, Saint Laurent transformed it into a cocktail dress with a voluminous skirt and a bolero jacket.

And in 2005 Yohji Yamamoto reinterpreted it in silk crepe to capture the garment's gender ambiguity, as Queen frontman Mercury did in the 1970s, wearing kimonos on stage during the British rock band's tours of Japan.

"It is a genderless garment. Fundamentally, that shape doesn't change whether you are a man or a woman," said Jackson.

"It seems very elegant and has that sense of performance.

"All fashion is performance in some way, but somehow, in a kimono, it's very easy to do it elegantly."

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Paris, France | Stella McCartney pledged  to try to change the world's biggest luxury fashion group from within after LVMH took a stake in her label, one of the most sustainable in the world.

The British designer made a spirited defence of her decision to become "personal sustainability adviser" to LVMH owner Bernard Arnault, who regularly swaps places with Amazon boss Jeff Bezos at the top of the list of the world's richest men.

"My mum (the late animal rights activist Linda McCartney) used to say infiltrate from within," McCartney told AFP hours before her Paris fashion week show, which featured lots of vegan leather and a menagerie of furry-costumed animals who skins are used in fashion.

And she batted away fears that Arnault was using her for window dressing after he dismissed teenage Swedish activist Greta Thunberg as not "offering anything other than criticism".

"Call me stupid. I hope I am right," McCartney said, after inviting Christiana Figueres, the former UN climate chief who was engineered the Paris agreement, to meet a group of fashion movers and shakers on the eve of her show. 

"I choose to believe that I can make change, that I can show them a great example of a different way of doing business," McCartney said.

- 'I won't let it go' -

"If my business is healthy -- which I need it to be to shout to them that this can be the future of fashion -- then I believe they are not going to sit back and ignore me," she added.

LVMH "saw the quality of products I was making and they compared it to the quality being made by all the other brands that are killing millions of animals and the environment, and they said, 'Hey this looks the same,'" McCartney said.

But the designer -- the daughter of Beatle Paul McCartney -- did not defend LVHM's decision not to sign the "Fashion Pact" on fighting climate change at the G7 summit in France last year, which was championed by its main rival, Kering. 

LVMH, whose huge stable of labels includes Dior, Louis Vuitton and Givenchy, is seen as lagging behind Kering, which owned half of McCartney's brand until she bought them out last year.

"I think it sends out a huge positive message that Mr Arnault has invested in a house that is this sustainable and has this kind of conversation the night before its show. 

"He is not here telling me I can't do this. He is fully behind it," McCartney insisted.

"I am his personal adviser on sustainability... and I am hugely passionate about it. I am not going to let it go. We will see what I can do, but my intention is to do something.

- 'Let's make change' -

"Fuck it, let's make change," she declared.

Asked if getting into bed with Arnault -- once dubbed "the wolf in a cashmere coat" -- wasn't risky for her brand, McCartney hit back that she "might have a few fleas myself -- but they are good ones that I am taking into another dog house.

"I also showed them a business model that was healthy and was making change and that was accepted and that was beautiful," she added.

The British creator has built up a formidable reputation for producing classy and wearable clothes that are ethically produced, pioneering recycled wool and new vegan materials to replace leather and fur.

The climate message has been omnipresent in Paris fashion week LVMH brand Dior festooning its show with neon slogans such as "Patriarchy = CO2" and "Patriarchy = climate emergency" that might make uncomfortable reading for its owner.

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Dior designer Maria Grazia Chiuri raided her teenage diaries for a sometimes touching Paris fashion week show on Tuesday that made the personal political.

The Italian -- the first women to lead the mythic French fashion house -- dived back into the 1970s when the women's liberation movement was shaking the world and fashion with it.

The day after Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein was finally found guilty of rape by a US court, Chiuri sent her models out under three traffic light-coloured neon signs flashing with the word "Consent".

Several other neon signs hammered home the designer's well-known feminist and environmental beliefs, including "Women's Love is Unpaid Labour", "When Women Strike, the World Stops" and "Patriarchy = CO2". 

Others like "Women are the Moon that Moves the Tides" were quietly poetic but just as powerful.

- Bandana scarves -

Chiuri said her clothes were a contemporary take on the decade that revolutionised relations between the sexes.

And the counterculture references were there from the start, with most of her models wearing bandana scarves on their heads.

Poncho coats, charm chains and shearling-lined suede boots and typical 1970s checks and argyle patterns ran cheek by jowl with more restrained black Dior classics.

There were also glimpses of Chiuri's schoolgirl past in a handful of looks where she teamed big very un-Dior work boots with clothes that had echoes of customised school uniforms.

She also sent out a run of looks pairing lace knee-high socks with Mary Jane shoes.

Chiuri told AFP that she was transported back to the period reading her teenage diary, which contained quite a few surprises.

"I had not realised that all my references began to form during my adolescence. The 1970s had a big influence on what made me," the 57-year-old said.

"Looking back now, I didn't realise I was living through a real historic moment.

"What influenced me most was how women began asserting themselves, to show that they were not only mothers, wives and daughters but that they had several aspects to themselves," the designer added.

"I remember the women who would come to my mother's dressmaking shop and who were defining themselves through their clothes and their way of being."

With Hollywood stars including Demi Moore, Sigourney Weaver and Rachel Brosnahan in the front row, the show was also a tribute to the Italian feminist thinker and art critic Carla Lonzi.

- Facing down Freud -

Lonzi's famous slogan "We are all Clitoridean Women" was also turned into a blazing red neon by the art collective Claire Fontaine for the show.

The line is a cheeky riposte to Freud, who Chiuri said considered the clitoral orgasm as "immature in relation to the vaginal one" and which traditionally needed male intervention.

Chiuri has had a big effect on street fashion since she took the reins at Dior three years ago, bringing the beret back into fashion in her first two shows.

As well as the bandana/gypsy scarves, her schoolgirl take on the 1970s is likely to be widely copied, with ties under leather jackets, as well as her vintage checks and argyles.

Watch out too for the new leather hybrid hat created by Dior's British hatter Stephen Jones, who crossed the beret with the gavroche cap. 

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Lumajang, Indonesia |Workers snap the miniature rocket's wings into place as Indonesia's little-known space agency readies its latest launch on barren scrubland in East Java.

With a 3,2,1 blast off, the two-metre-long projectile belches a trail of fire and then soars a few hundred metres before crashing in a heap -- earning a thumbs up from scientists who declared the test a success.

It's a very long way from a Mission Control in Houston, but the Southeast Asian archipelago's answer to NASA has big hopes and is now planning to build its first spaceport on a tropical island off the coast of easternmost Papua.

"We've got a dream to put our own satellite-launching rocket 200 or 300 kilometres into space within five years," said Lilis Mariani, head of the Rocket Technology Centre at the National Institute of Aeronautics and Space, known as Lapan.

Some experts question how realistic that timeline is, and officials acknowledge much will depend on whether Jakarta stumps up the necessary funds. 

There is resurgent international interest in space travel and colonisation, with NASA planning to send two astronauts to the moon by 2024, some 55 years after their last mission there. The Trump administration has pledged to increase funding for the project and is also making plans for travel to Mars. 

SpaceX, a private US firm launched by Tesla chief Elon Musk, has said its first crewed flight will launch in the first half of this year, while Virgin Galactic plans a series of missions in the next three years. 

- A giant leap -

Indonesia's space agency is a relative minnow, dwarfed in Asia by counterparts in Japan, China and India.

Lapan has had some success with developing research satellite technology, but it wants to make its mark in space flight by sending a homegrown rocket into orbit.

Back at the launch site on East Java, Lapan's scientists were gauging the tiny test rocket's speed, movement and other specifications.

"It was stable on take off and moved well," said Sri Kilawati, head of the Centre's rocket control programme.

"The objective was to study rocket control. They travel at a very high rate of speed so you've got to observe their behaviour," she added.

Achieving a real life launch in five years requires a giant leap, conceded Lavi Zuhal, head of aerospace engineering at Indonesia's Bandung Institute of Technology.

"Lapan is still far behind in terms of launch technology, although it has been quite successful in developing satellites,"  he explained, adding: "The engineers at Lapan haven't fully mastered rocket technology yet."

Kilawati acknowledged that reaching Indonesia's ambitions for a state-of-the-art launch centre isn't just about technological prowess.

"Funding comes from state coffers so it depends a lot on the government's priorities," she said.

Still, the East Java rocket test underlined Indonesia was pushing toward the orbital launch goal, even if a five-year timeline was ambitious, said Leena Pivovarova, an analyst at US-based Northern Sky Research. 

"In the grand scheme of rocket development you can think of this as a step in the right direction," she said. 

"This is toward a larger purpose of achieving orbital launch capability." 

- Inspiring the next generation -

Indonesia's space aspirations began in the early sixties with the creation of Lapan and it was one of the first developing nations to have communications satellites launched into space by the United States, where they were made.

It planned to send an astronaut into space with NASA, but the bid was shelved in the wake of the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger crash and no other opportunities have come to pass. 

But now Lapan is now talking to its Russia counterpart about sending one of its astronauts on a future mission -- though there are few concrete details so far.

Indonesia has cooperated on technology with counterparts in the US, Germany, Japan and the Ukraine among others over the years. 

Two of its homegrown satellites -- used in research to mitigate natural disasters -- were launched into orbit by India in 2015.

But the lack of infrastructure remains a serious problem. 

In November, Indonesia finally confirmed plans to construct its first spaceport off the coast of Papua, acknowledging that its existing launch site is too risky for large rocket launches because it is too small and in a densely populated area.

The new location on the equator is also ideal as it cuts fuel costs and could potentially draw interest from other countries keen to launch satellites, experts said. 

Getting one of its own citizens into orbit would bolster the nation's space record.

"An Indonesian astronaut could boost (its) space profile internationally," said Phil Smith, an analyst at US-based Bryce Space and Technology.

He added: "But it would more significantly inspire Indonesian citizens." 

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