Elon Musk is another step closer to Mars after his company SpaceX successfully fired up its SN20 Starship prototype for the first time.
The 165ft-tall rocket roared into life ahead of its highly-anticipated debut test flight in the coming months.
Starship is a fully reusable rocket and spacecraft combination capable of ferrying up to 100 people to the Red Planet.
It has also been chosen by NASA as the basis for a lunar lander that will carry the next man and the first woman down to the moon's surface as part of the space agency's Artemis programme.
The Starship Serial Number 20 (SN20) craft is being prepped for an orbital flight and the brief 'static fire' test was seen as an important milestone in its development.
A step closer to lift-off: Elon Musk is another step closer to Mars after his SpaceX company successfully fired up its SN20 Starship prototype for the first time
In August, SpaceX stacked its Starship onto of the Super Heavy booster for the first time
The test took place at 20:16 EDT on Thursday at SpaceX's Starbase facility, near the Texas town of Boca Chica, and initially involved the firing of one of SN20's two giant Raptor engines
The rocket roared into life ahead of its highly-anticipated first test flight in the coming months
It took place at 20:16 EDT on Thursday (01:16 BST Friday) at SpaceX's Starbase facility, near the south Texas town of Boca Chica, and initially involved the firing of one of SN20's two giant Raptor engines.
SpaceX posted a video of the test on Twitter, writing: 'First firing of a Raptor vacuum engine integrated onto a Starship.'
The 'vacuum' Raptor is optimised to operate in space, while SN20 also has a standard 'sea-level' version.
At 21:18 EDT (02:18 BST Friday), a second 'static fire' test was carried out that looked brighter and more powerful than the first. It is thought to have involved both Raptors, although SpaceX has not confirmed this.
On Monday, Musk's company also carried out a test of the vehicle's pre-burners, which heat and mix the Raptor engines' liquid methane and liquid oxygen propellants.
Starship consists of two parts: a spacecraft that is also called Starship and a massive first-stage booster that it sits atop, known as Super Heavy.
The combined system will stand
