SpaceX launched the eighth test flight of its giant Starship rocket on Thursday, but lost contact with its spacecraft shortly after liftoff.

LOS ANGELES, March 6 (Xinhua) -- SpaceX launched the eighth test flight of its giant Starship rocket on Thursday, but lost contact with its spacecraft shortly after liftoff.

Starship took off from the company's Starbase facility near Brownsville in the U.S. state of Texas at about 5:30 p.m. Central Time (2330 GMT).

About seven minutes after liftoff, the rocket's Super Heavy booster successfully returned to the launch site for a "chopsticks" catch -- catching the returning booster using mechanical "chopsticks," called "Mechazilla," on the launch tower, according to a live broadcast.

But the Starship spacecraft lost altitude control and communication with the ground.

"During Starship's ascent burn, the vehicle experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly and contact was lost," SpaceX said on X.

"Our team immediately began coordination with safety officials to implement pre-planned contingency responses," said the company.

SpaceX said it will review the data from the flight test to better understand the root cause, adding that Thursday's flight will offer additional lessons to improve Starship's reliability.

According to SpaceX, the objectives of the eighth flight test include Starship's first payload deployment, multiple reentry experiments geared towards returning the upper stage to the launch site for catch, and the launch, return and catch of the Super Heavy booster.

With the disassembly of the spacecraft, the only objective achieved was launching and catching the Super Heavy booster on land.

The flight test was originally scheduled on Monday, but was scrubbed at T-40 seconds due to technical issues.

SpaceX's Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket, collectively referred to as Starship, represent a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond.

Starship plays a key role in NASA. It is the vehicle that NASA selected to carry astronauts on the final leg of their trip to the moon during a mission called Artemis III, currently planned for 2026.