Its last two launches ended in huge explosions, scattering debris across the Caribbean. On Tuesday, SpaceX’s giant Starship at least did somewhat better.

A ninth test flight saw the rocket roar into space without blowing up, but then things started to go wrong.

After separating from the Starship, the booster section lost contact with operators and plunged into the sea.

The company had planned for it to make a controlled splashdown.

Meanwhile, the Starship continued into space, but began to spin uncontrollably.

It also failed to deploy eight mock satellites in a test of its payload dispenser.

A SpaceX staffer said the test was “not looking great”, but said the company had still achieved many of its objectives for the launch.

In a post on X, boss Elon Musk said there was a “lot of good data to review”.

The Starship is key to his goal of developing a reusable launch system that can take humans to the moon and Mars.

Musk also sees Starship as eventually replacing SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets, which dominate the market for satellite launches.

Now he’s unlikely to be daunted by the latest less-than-total success.

SpaceX is built on a strategy of aggressive flight testing.

It pushes its spacecraft to the point of failure, then works on improvements through a process of repetition.

The firm says the Starship models that have flown this year already feature huge upgrades over earlier iterations.