Blue Origin has hit its second milestone in as many weeks after the successful test of its crew escape system. The test took place on Friday at the company’s west Texas launch site and included a firing of the escape motor on a full-scale sub-orbital crew capsule reaching an altitude of 2,307 feet. This marks a significant milestone for Jeff Bezos’ company as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Development program.

“The Blue Origin team worked hard and smart to pull off this first test of our suborbital Crew Capsule escape system,” the Amazon founder wrote on the Blue Origin website.

The crew escape system is designed for Blue Origin’s sub-orbital vehicle and uses a pusher motor rather than the traditional tractor system that “pulled” the capsule away from the rockets during the early days of NASA’s manned space program. Both types of escape systems are designed to carry the crew capsule away from the main launch vehicle in the event of an emergency during the early parts of the ascent stage, even before the rocket leaves the launch pad.

The tractor system is also used by the Soyuz rocket and was put into use during the Soyuz T-10-1 mission in 1983. While still on the launch pad, the launch rocket was engulfed in flames when the capsule’s escape rockets were fired just seconds before the Soyuz exploded. A disadvantage of the tractor system is that in the event of a successful launch, the motors and tower on top of the capsule must be jettisoned after critical altitude is reached in order to make it to orbit. The simpler pusher system is also being used by SpaceX on its manned version of the Dragon spacecraft.

“The use of a pusher configuration marks a significant departure from the traditional towed-tractor escape tower concepts of Mercury and Apollo,” Blue Origin’s Rob Meyerson said in a statement from NASA. “Providing crew escape without the need to jettison the unused escape system gets us closer to our goal of safe and affordable human spaceflight.”

After the capsule made the ascent to 2,307 feet, it was carried back to the ground under a trio of parachutes landing upright 1,630 feet away from the launch pad, marking a successful simulation of a crew escape scenario. The pusher system is also expected to be implemented on Blue Origin’s orbital spacecraft as well.

The announcement of the crew escape launch is the second story out of Blue Origin in the past two weeks, putting the company’s overly-secretive reputation at risk.