The largest, most powerful launch vehicle ever built is meant to be a key part of SpaceX’s plans to send humans to Mars—and NASA’s plans to return astronauts to the moon, too

After back-to-back Starship upper stage failures, SpaceX on Tuesday again launched the world's most powerful rocket, but faced new problems.

The debris fell into the Indian Ocean away from inhabited areas. SpaceX was unable to conduct several tests it had planned during the flight, such as deploying simulators of the next-generation Starlink satellites and assessing improvements to the vehicle's heat shield.