Elon Musk’s company was aiming to send the nearly 120-metre Starship rocket on a round-the-world trip from the southern tip of Texas, near the Mexican border. It carried no people or satellites.
The plan called for the booster to peel away from the spacecraft minutes after liftoff, but that didn't happen. The rocket began to tumble and then exploded four minutes into the flight, plummeting into the gulf.
After separating, the spacecraft was supposed to continue east and attempt to circle the world, before crashing into the Pacific near Hawaii.
SpaceX said that "Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation".
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