The latest flight of SpaceX’s Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, got all the way up to space, but not all the way back down to Earth.

The upper-stage vehicle coasted through space on Tuesday, surpassing flights in January and March that ended in explosions and showers of debris over the Atlantic Ocean. But halfway through its uncrewed journey, the spacecraft sprang a propellant leak. That caused it to start spinning out of control. The Starship vehicle used in the test flight was not able to survive the intense heat, breaking up as it fell back into the atmosphere.

By design, the debris fell into the Indian Ocean, far from areas inhabited by people.

That suggests SpaceX engineers still have much work to do with Starship, especially the upper-stage vehicle, before the spacecraft can be reused frequently, a necessity for fulfilling the vision of Elon Musk, who founded the company in order to send people to Mars one day.

Several tests that SpaceX planned during the flight, the ninth, were not conducted.

Several hours before the launch, Mr. Musk told Tim Dodd, a space journalist who hosts the “Everyday Astronaut” video podcast, that “by far the most important thing” was the re-entry portion of the test flight. The heat protection on the underside of the spacecraft included several variations to see what might work best.

“It’s all about the tiles,” Mr. Musk said.

Because the spacecraft was spinning by then, that data was not collected, and the tests will have to be attempted again on the next flight.

There was nonetheless progress during the flight, which lifted off from Starbase, Texas, around 7:37 p.m. Eastern.

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