First off, a stone does not skip off the surface of the water. It skips off the water. The stone has to bite into the water to use its lift to come back out. A skipping stone can, and sometimes does, go completely under the surface in the process of skipping. The air is a fluid as well, and a lifting body can in fact skip in the same way as a stone does in water. Air has a very substantial "existence", especially as you move faster. However lift is not required for "skipping" out of the atmosphere, since unlike the apparent surface of a pond, the atmosphere is curved. All that is really meant in the case of a skip entry is that the entry flight path angle was not steep enough to prevent the object from leaving the atmosphere again. The trajectory of the ballistic skip flight does not curve up like that of a skipping stone. It still curves down. However the radius of curvature is greater

trajectory where the spacecraft stays in the atmosphere for a sustained flight period of time. In most examples, a skip reentry roughly doubles the range of suborbital Boost-glide, or skip-glide, is a class of atmospheric entry trajectories that follow a non-ballistic trajectory by employing aerodynamic lift in the high upper atmosphere. The term is mostly used to refer to a number of designs that used lift to extend the range of an otherwise shorter-ranged rocket. Skip is a flight trajectory where the spacecraft goes in and out the atmosphere. Glide is a flig Boost-glide, or skip-glide, is a class of atmospheric entry trajectories that follow a non-ballistic trajectory by employing aerodynamic lift in the high upper atmosphere. The term is mostly used to refer to a number of designs that used lift to extend the range of an otherwise shorter-ranged rocket. Skip is a flight trajectory where the spacecraft goes in and out the atmosphere. Glide is a flight trajectory where the spacecraft stays in the atmosphere for a sustained flight period of time. In most examples, a skip reentry roughly doubles the range of suborbital spaceplanes and reentry vehicles over the purely ballistic trajectory. In others, a series of skips allows the range to be further extended. Boost-glide entry was first seriously studied as a way to extend the range of ballistic missiles, but was not used operationally in this form as conventional missiles with extended range were introduced. The underlying aerodynamic concepts have been used to produce maneuverable reentry vehicles (MARV), to increase the accuracy of some missiles like the Pershing II. More recently, the concepts have been used to produce hypersonic glide vehicles (HGV) to avoid interception as in the case of the Avangard. The range-extension is used as a way to allow flights at lower altitudes, helping avoid radar detection for a longer time compared to a higher ballistic path. The concept has also been used to extend the reentry time for vehicles returning to Earth from the Moon, which would otherwise have to shed a large amount of velocity in a short time and thereby suffer very high heating rates. The Apollo Command Module also used what is essentially a skip re-entry, as did the Soviet Zond and Chinese Chang'e 5-T1.

and released the Returner (reentry capsule) just before arrival. Returner: The Returner performed a skip reentry to bounce off the atmosphere once before Chang'e 5 (Chinese: 嫦娥五号; pinyin: Cháng'é wǔhào) was the fifth lunar exploration mission in the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program of CNSA, and China's first lunar sample-return mission. The spacecraft pair launched on 23 November 2020, atop a Long March 5 rocket from Wenchang Space Launch Site on Hainan Island, landed on the Moon on 1 December, collected ~1731 g (61.1 oz) of lunar samples (includi The Chang'e 5 Ascender lifted off from Oceanus Procellarum at 15:10 UTC, on 3 December 2020, and six minutes later, arrived in lunar orbit. The Ascender docked with the Orbiter/Returner combination in lunar orbit on 5 December 2020, at 21:42 UTC, and the samples were transferred to the return capsule at 22:12 UTC. The Ascender separated from the Orbiter/Returner combination on 6 December 2020, at 04:35 UTC. After completing its role of the mission, the Ascender was…