Watch: SpaceX Starship launch makes history as world's most powerful rocket blasts off

This was the moment the SpaceX Starship rocket launched into orbit on Saturday (18 November).

After months of delays, SpaceX finally launched its massive Starship rocket into space for the first time.

Today’s attempt comes seven months after the first effort to launch a fully stacked Starship – which is both the tallest and most powerful rocket ever built – ended in a catastrophic explosion, just minutes after lift-off.

SpaceX boss Elon Musk says Starship holds the key to making humanity a multi-planetary species, with plans to build hundreds of the spacecraft in order to set up a permanent human colony on Mars.

Starship must first successfully conduct an uncrewed orbital test, which will see it leave from its launchpad at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Texas, before flying almost all the way around the Earth and splashing down off the coast of Hawaii.

A 20-minute launch window opens at 7am CT (1pm GMT).

The flight was expected to last around 90 minutes.

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