SpaceX rocket orbits Earth then returns to launch pad in breakthrough for Musk

A SpaceX rocket has returned to Earth on its longest flight in orbit yet to the facilities it was launched from in a key milestone for rocket reusability.

SpaceX Starship 42 launched from the company's Texas facilities on Friday, local time.

After deploying 26 Starlink satellites in orbit, it fired one of its engines to begin an atmospheric plunge.

It faced blistering heat as its orbital speed of some 27,000 kilometres per hour slowed to a supersonic freefall in the skies above the Texas facilities.

The spacecraft then reignited three engines to flip itself in a vertical position and steer itself toward the launch tower, where two mechanical "chopstick" arms clasped onto the spacecraft as it hovered in place.

The towering two-stage rocket's Super Heavy booster, the rocket's bottom half, carried Starship to space.

That booster had failed to make a similar return to the launch pad some 10 minutes after lift-off, but the Starship upper stage's successful return after orbiting Earth 14 times for over 22 hours, marked a key engineering milestone in the company's decade-long effort to develop a fully reusable rocket.

In pursuit of putting humans on the moon

SpaceX's dominance in the global launch industry is centred on its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, which has launched more than 700 times since 2010.

That rocket's first stage is reusable, but its second stage — the part that delivers payloads into orbit — is discarded into the ocean after each flight.

With Starship, owner Elon Musk wants a rocket system that can fly to space and back like commercial aeroplanes, relevant to his ambitions to put humans on the Moon and eventually Mars.

Though Saturday's Starship recovery is a key milestone in that effort, SpaceX has yet to recover both Starship stages in a single mission.

SpaceX is trying to engineer new tile designs that will require little to no refurbishment after each mission.