SpaceX Starship launch: President-elect Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk watch launch as landing stalls

President-elect Donald Trump has joined billionaire SpaceX founder Elon Musk for the latest test launch of his Starship rocket, watching on as the vessel spectacularly launched into space before trouble broke out.

Mr Trump joined his soon-to-be head of his newly created Department of Government Efficiency in Texas, sporting a red Make America Great Again hat with numbers 45 and 47 stitched on the side, representing his two US presidencies.

Before the launch, Mr Trump took to Truth Social to write: “I’m heading to the Great State of Texas to watch the launch of the largest object ever to be elevated, not only to Space, but simply by lifting off the ground. Good luck to Elon Musk and the Great Patriots involved in this incredible project!”

On arrival, the two hugged before Mr Musk gave Mr Trump a tour and explanation of how the launch would take place.

The duo headed to the control around 30 minutes before take-off where they eventually watched the successful launch shortly after 9am.

Although the take-off went as planned, SpaceX appeared to face significant issues as the rocket returned to Earth.

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

SpaceX had hoped to use the “chopsticks” mechanical arm to catch the rocket as it returned to Earth, but moments before it returned, the catch was called off the ship was directed to land in the Gulf of Mexico.

The reason for the late change remains unspecified, however, the booster hit the water without incident.

SpaceX kept the same flight path as last time but changed some steps along the way as well as the time of day.

Among the new objectives that were achieved: igniting one of the spacecraft’s engines in space, which would be necessary when returning from orbit. There were also thermal protection experiments aboard the spacecraft, with some areas stripped of heat tiles to see whether catch mechanisms might work there on future flights.

The spacecraft descended nose-first during the last part of entry, before flipping and splashing down.

SpaceX wants to eventually return and reuse the entire 120m Starship.

Full-scale recycling would drive down the cost of hauling cargo and people to the moon and Mars while speeding things up.

The recycling of SpaceX’s Falcon rockets flying out of Florida and California has already saved the company time and money.

NASA is paying SpaceX more than $US4 billion ($6.1 billion) to land astronauts on the moon via Starship on back-to-back missions later this decade.

Mr Musk envisions launching a fleet of Starships to build a city one day on Mars.

This was the sixth launch of a fully assembled Starship since 2023. The first three ended up exploding.