SpaceX's megarocket Starship nails historic ocean splashdown

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

Scraps of fiery debris came flying off the spaceship on Thursday as it descended over the Indian Ocean northwest of Australia, dramatic video from an onboard camera showed, but it ultimately held together and survived atmospheric reentry.

"Despite loss of many tiles and a damaged flap, Starship made it all the way to a soft landing in the ocean!" SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on X.

The most powerful rocket ever built blasted off from the company's Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, at 1250 GMT, before soaring to space and coasting halfway across the globe, for a journey that lasted around an hour and five minutes.

With its fully reusable design, Starship is essential to fulfilling Musk's ambitious vision of colonising the Red Planet and making humankind a multi-planetary species.

NASA meanwhile has contracted a modified version to act as the final vehicle that will take astronauts down to the surface of the Moon under the Artemis programme later this decade.

Trial-and-error approach

Three previous test flights had ended in Starship's destruction, all part of what the company says is an acceptable cost in its rapid trial-and-error approach to development.

"The payload for these flight tests is data," SpaceX said on X, a mantra repeated by the commentary team throughout the flight.

During the last test in March, the spaceship managed to fly for 49 minutes before it was lost as it careened into the atmosphere at around 27,000 kilometres per hour (nearly 17,000 mph).

Since then SpaceX made several software and hardware upgrades.

Around seven minutes after liftoff, the first stage booster, called Super Heavy, succeeded in an upright splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, to massive applause from engineers at mission control in Hawthorne, California.

The cheers grew even louder in the flight's final minutes. Ground teams whooped and hollered as the upper stage glowed a fiery red, the result of a plasma field generated by the friction of the vehicle streaking through the atmosphere.

Space fans around the world watched in awe, thanks to a live broadcast powered by SpaceX's vast constellation of Starlink internet satellites.

A chunk of flying debris even cracked the camera lens, but in the end, Starship stuck the landing.

"Congratulations SpaceX on Starship's successful test flight this morning!" NASA chief Bill Nelson wrote on X.

"We are another step closer to returning humanity to the Moon through #Artemis — then looking onward to Mars."