The world's tallest NASA rocket, the Ares 1-X, blasted off at 11:30 a.m. local time, from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The unmanned rocket fired its motors for just over two minutes in the test flight. The Ares 1-X then parachuted down into the Atlantic Ocean to be recovered by a NASA ship. It is the first new rocket developed by NASA since the 1970s-era space shuttle.

The test flight is to verify computer models used to design rockets. And it’s part of a 445 million U.S. dollar NASA technology program aimed at replacing the 1980’s space shuttles.

NASA hopes to develop two Ares rockets to return U.S. astronauts to the moon sometime in the 2020s.