SpaceX launched a new one on Tuesday Spaceship rocketbut omitted capturing the booster gigantic mechanical arms.

In contrast to last month’s success, the booster was targeted for a landing in the Gulf of Mexico. The catch was called off for unknown reasons just four minutes into the test flight from Texas, and the booster hit the water three minutes later.

Not all criteria for a booster capture were met, so the flight director did not order the booster to return to the launch site, SpaceX spokesman Dan Huot said. He did not indicate what went wrong.

At the same time, the empty spacecraft launched from Texas atop Starship flew over the Gulf of Mexico in a near loop around the world, similar to October’s test flight. The shiny, retro-looking craft soared through space and descended into the Indian Ocean for a controlled but destructive end to the hour-long demo.

It was the sixth test for the world’s largest and most powerful rocket that SpaceX and NASA hope to use to get astronauts back to the moon and eventually to Mars.

SpaceX kept the same flight path as last time, but changed some steps and the time of day along the way. The spaceship took off in the late afternoon instead of early in the morning to ensure there was enough daylight to view the spacecraft’s descent.

Among the new objectives achieved: igniting one of the spacecraft’s engines in space, which would be necessary upon return from Earth orbit. There were also thermal protection experiments on board the spacecraft, with some areas cleared of heat tiles to see if capture mechanisms could work there on future flights. And the spacecraft descended nose first during the final part of the entry, before flipping over and landing upright in the Indian Ocean. More upgrades are planned for the next test flight.

Donald Trump flew in for the launch in the latest sign of a deepening bond between the newly elected president and Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO.

SpaceX ultimately wants to return and reuse the entire 121-meter spaceship. Full recycling would reduce the cost of transporting cargo and people to the moon and Mars, while speeding things up. Recycling SpaceX’s Falcon rockets flying from Florida and California has already saved the company time and money.

NASA will pay SpaceX more than $4 billion to land astronauts on the moon via Starship for back-to-back missions later this decade. Musk is considering launching a fleet of spaceships to one day build a city on Mars.

This was the sixth launch of a fully assembled spaceship since 2023. The first three eventually exploded.

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