SpaceX 'loses' 'world's largest and most powerful' rocket - minutes after liftoff from Texas

SpaceX's giant Starship rocket has been "lost" just minutes after its seventh test flight.

The rocket, which is being considered the largest and most powerful in the world - lifted off from Boca Chica, southern Texas, on Thursday at around 16:40 p.m. local time, foreign media write, according to Telegraph.

Just minutes after the rocket's launch, its booster made its planned return to Earth and after passing briefly over the launch pad, it was "spectacularly caught between two giant mechanical arms."

This is the second time SpaceX has managed this particular feat.

However, as crowds cheered for the booster's return, the company said it had lost contact with Starship after the engines shut down.

"It appears we lost contact a little less than eight and a half minutes into the flight," the company was quoted as saying.

The flight was the seventh test for the newly improved Starship and marked the next step in Elon Musk's effort to build the "first fully reusable spacecraft" to take humans to Mars.

"Every Starship launch is a step closer to Mars," he wrote in X, before the latest launch. /Telegraph/