Despite some engine failures along the way, SpaceX completed a mostly successful test flight of its giant Starship rocket on Friday evening.

Starship is the largest and most powerful rocket ever built. The 407-foot-tall vehicle consists of an upper-stage spacecraft, also called Starship and often shortened to Ship, and a powerful booster stage with 33 engines, known as the Super Heavy.

The upper-stage spacecraft survived the re-entry into the atmosphere and performed a final maneuver to simulate a landing over the Indian Ocean even though only two, instead of the planned three, engines fired.

It then, as expected, toppled over into the water and exploded in a ball of fire.

It was the 12th test flight of Starship and the first launch of a major new iteration of the vehicle, known as Version 3. SpaceX officials have described it as almost a different rocket, incorporating numerous changes designed to improve reliability and performance.

The outcome was far better than Starship test flights last year, two of which disintegrated soon after launch, showering a rain of debris that disrupted air traffic over the Caribbean.

The promising results will boost confidence for NASA, which is looking to use Starship as the lander to take its astronauts to the surface of the moon. In a post on X, Jared Isaacman, the NASA administrator, congratulated SpaceX and Elon Musk, the company’s founder and chief executive. “One step closer to the Moon…one step closer to Mars,” he wrote.