Starship launch: SpaceX fires most powerful rocket ever made into orbit

The previous two tests saw the spacecraft explode soon after it was launched.

Elon Musk’s private space company hopes that the Starship craft will eventually carry humans onto the Moon – and then to Mars.

A live SpaceX webcast of the liftoff showed the rocketship rising from the launch tower into the morning sky as the Super Heavy’s cluster of powerful Raptor engines thundered to life in a ball of flame and billowing clouds of exhaust and water vapour.

The launch came less than 24 hours after federal regulators granted SpaceX a launch license for the test.

Unlike the first two test flights last year, aimed mainly at demonstrating that the spacecraft’s two stages can separate after launch, plans for Thursday’s test called for an attempt to open Starship’s payload door and reignite one of its engines in space.

Each of the previous flights were routed toward a planned crash landing near the Hawaiian islands in the Pacific, while the latest flight was targeting a splashdown zone in the Indian Ocean.

Even if it achieves more of its test objectives than before, SpaceX acknowledged a high probability that Starship’s latest flight would end up like the first two, with the vehicle blowing itself to bits before its intended trajectory is complete.

Regardless of how well it performed on Thursday, all indications are that Starship remains a considerable distance from becoming fully operational.