Elon Musk and SpaceX stepped toward Mars and the expressed objective of making mankind a multi-planetary species … by shooting a monster metal thermos into the Texas sky Tuesday evening.

The organization played out a right around 500-foot (150 meter) “hop” of its SN5 Starship prototype at its Boca Chica development facility at 5 p.m. PT.

The almost nine-story-tall test make lighted its single Raptor engine and gradually rose into the air before then tenderly coming back to the ground and landing upstanding not a long way from where it took off.

For a second after the engine initially touched off, it looked as though SN5 was attempting to get airborne, however then it transcended its own smoke, floated and came in for a delicate landing. It voyaged only a small part of the in excess of 35 million miles Musk trusts the last Starship will cross to take people to Mars.

The hotly anticipated low-altitude test flight comes after a handful of past prototypes fizzled while never leaving the ground, for the most part during pressurization tests.

SN5 is intended to have the option to play out an orbital flight, however before pushing toward space, it originally needed to finish this relatively small hop.

The around 98-foot-tall (30 meter) vehicle is a stripped-down version of what the last Starship rocket will resemble, without the nose cone or fins. It’s 30 feet (9 meters) wide and it’s fundamentally a fuel tank and a single Raptor engine finished off with a weight that simulates a payload. The resulting shape is something like a thermos many will perceive.

It’s been a major August for SpaceX as of now, with the organization’s Crew Dragon rocket effectively returning NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley from the International Space Station and sprinkling down in the Gulf of Mexico throughout the end of the week.

“Mars is looking real,” Musk tweeted after the hop.

Insane to feel that interplanetary travel may start with this brief and strange looking flight. Can hardly wait to see the following big step on this long journey.