BEIJING, July 30 (Xinhuanet) -- A project to send a 300 gram piece of cheese into space nearly ended in complete failure this week. The bid to launch the cheese into space was to mark the anniversary of the first moon landing 40 years ago.

    The project organized by West Country Cheese makers in Britain cost around 1,000 pounds (1,649 U.S. dollars) and took 18 months to prepare. But as the cheese, which was attached to a weather balloon, soared into the sky not everything went according to plan.

    The weather balloon lifted off from Pewsey, Wiltshire in the west of England at 4 a.m. Tuesday. The 1.6m-wide helium balloon was expected to burst some 30 km above sea level whereupon a capsule containing the cheese would descend back to Earth on a special parachute.

    A digital camera was also attached to take photographs of the cheese in space. But shortly after take-off an on-board Global Positioning System (GPS) failed.

    Organizers said the cheese could have landed anywhere between Cambridgeshire, in the east of England, to somewhere in Wiltshire.

    Chairman Philip Crawford said, "We are very proud of our authentic Cheddar (cheese) which we make by hand on our farms and we set ourselves the very highest standards. It seemed appropriate, therefore, that we should mark the anniversary of the first moon landing with a giant leap for cheese kind."

    Shortly after the launch fellow member Dom Lane said, "We've been tracking the trajectory and the current prediction is that it could land anywhere from here in Wiltshire to Hemel Hempstead (near London)."

    The ambitious space cheese mission was however spared total humiliation when the Somerset farmhouse cheddar landed in a garden in Buckinhamshire, 120 km from its launch site. Landing intact, it was found by Leonie Gould, 56, who discovered the 'Interstellar Cheddar' in the back garden of her home on her return from a 14-hour shift at Wycombe Hospital where she works.

    "I was shocked to find this nine inch-long box (22 cm), covered in foil with a cheese attached to an aerial," Mrs Gould told a local newspaper. “I didn't know what it was or where it came from, so I ran inside and called the police," she said.

    "When the officers arrived, they just laughed and explained about the cheese launch mission," she said, and described the whole affair as being "a bit strange!”

    The cheese was reunited with West Country Cheesemakers' mission controller Dom Lane who told the BBC, "I am driving back from High Wycombe with the cheese now. I may try a bit to see if it has matured at high altitude and then it will probably go into a glass case at our production offices." He spoke of his disappointment that the camera failed to work but said the mission was otherwise a success. He also thanked Mrs Gould who'll be getting a box of cheese as a reward.

    (Agencies)