On Tuesday morning Blue Origin did something no other company, or country, has ever done before. The company launched its rocket, and 45 seconds later, instructed the capsule to fire its engine and abort the flight. The rocket subsequently emerged from a curtain of flames and continued into space, blackened but not broken. Later, both the capsule and rocket safely landed in the West Texas desert.

The dramatic flight of the New Shepard vehicles made for exceptional viewing, and Blue Origin obliged with a webcast from start to finish. But more than that, the dramatic minutes between launch and landing felt like something of a historic turn in human spaceflight.

This particular capsule and rocket have now flown together five times in less than 11 months and passed a succession of ever more rigorous tests. After flying New Shepard twice in late 2015 and early 2016 on nominal missions, the company began pushing the envelope. In April, it held off restarting the rocket’s BE-3 engine until just 3,600 feet above the ground, six seconds before landing. The engine responded by restarting and ramping up quickly. Two months later, the company intentionally had one of the capsule’s three parachutes fail during landing, and it still made a safe touchdown. And on Tuesday, of course, the company conducted its most dramatic test of all, an in-flight abort.