SpaceX on Wednesday launched another test flight of an early Mars rocket prototype at its South Texas facility, sending the vehicle soaring up to about six miles above Earth, then putting it through a series of aerial acrobatics before re-lighting its engines and landing it upright back on a landing pad, CNN reports.

The vehicle, called SN15, was the fifth of SpaceX's rocket prototypes to attempt such a landing and the first to do so successfully.

“Starship landing nominal!” tweeted SpaceX CEO Elon Musk after the successful landing.

Wednesday’s successful test comes after four previous prototypes attempted to safely land after soaring a few miles into the air, with all of the prior missions ending in explosions.

SN15 is an early iteration of Starship, the vehicle that Musk envisions will one day carry the first humans to Mars.

In March, a SpaceX rocket prototype, known as SN10, soared over South Texas during a test flight before exploding on its landing pad.

A month earlier, the SN9 rocket was cleared for lift-off from Boca Chica, Texas by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). It launched smoothly and progressively shut down its engines as it reached a height of 10 kilometers, then performed a series of test maneuvers in a horizontal "belly flop" position.

The previous prototype of Starship met a similar fate in December.