Elon Musk's SpaceX launched its 11th Starship rocket and landed it in the Indian Ocean west of Australia - the last flight before the company begins test-launching a new version of the giant rocket outfitted with more features for moon and Mars missions.

Starship, which includes the Starship upper stage stacked atop its Super Heavy booster, launched on Monday night from SpaceX's Starbase facilities in Texas.

After sending the Starship stage to space, Super Heavy returned for a soft water landing in the Gulf of Mexico seven minutes after liftoff, testing a landing engine configuration before blowing itself up.

Its last mission, in August, ended a streak of testing failures earlier this year.

Monday's flight was similar to the previous one, again deploying a batch of mock Starlink satell

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