SpaceX launched its Starship rocket on Thursday in its latest test flight to bring the booster back to the launch pad, but lost contact with the ascending spacecraft when its engine stalled.

Officials from Elon Musk's company said the spacecraft had been destroyed.

The spacecraft was originally scheduled to fly over the Gulf of Mexico on a near-around-the-world flight, similar to previous test flights. SpaceX filled it with 10 dummy satellites to practice releasing them. This is the first flight of this new upgraded spacecraft.

Before the failure, SpaceX used a giant robotic arm for a second time to lift the booster back to the launch pad minutes after it lifted off from Texas. The descending booster hovers on the launch pad before being grabbed by a pair of robotic arms known as chopsticks.

The 400-foot (123-meter) rocket roared away from Boca Chica, near the Mexican border, in the late afternoon. The late hour ensured daylight entry halfway across the world.

Sweeping through space, the gleaming retro craft — which Musk intended to be a moon and Mars craft — aimed toward the Indian Ocean, bringing a controlled but disruptive end to the hour-long demonstration.

SpaceX reinforced the capture tower after the November launch ended up damaging sensors on the arm, forcing the team to abandon the capture attempt. That booster was guided into the bay.

The company also upgraded the spacecraft for the latest demonstration. The test satellites are the same size as SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites and, like the spacecraft, are designed to crash into the Indian Ocean to end their missions. Contact was lost approximately 8 1/2 minutes into the flight.

Musk plans to launch a real Starlink on a Starship, then move it to other satellites and eventually launch astronauts.

This is the seventh test flight of the world's largest and most powerful rocket. NASA has reserved two Starships to carry astronauts to the moon later this decade. Musk’s goal is Mars.

"Every Starship launch is one step closer to Mars," Musk said via X before the launch.

Hours earlier, in Florida, another billionaire’s rocket company — Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin — launched its latest supermassive rocket, New Glenn. The rocket entered orbit on its first flight, successfully placing an experimental satellite thousands of miles above Earth. But the first stage booster was destroyed and it failed to land on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean.