The Bloodhound LSR project has appeared back on the automotive scene in a big way. A year ago, this whole “make it to 1,000 mph”thing seemed doomed to fail. But now, the supersonic car has rocketed firmly over the halfway mark—and there’s a damn good chance driver Andy Green can actually take it all the way.

Going from zero to 1,000 is as absurd as it is dangerous, so the Bloodhound crew has been slowly gearing up with a series of practice runs designed to hit more manageable targets. Think of it like setting a goal to lose weight; it’s way healthier and way more achievable to break things up in tinier chunks!

But today is a big one for the LSR. Today it hit 501 mph, which you can watch (in 5x slow motion) below:

This run firmly settles the Bloodhound LSR in the top ten fastest cars in the world, , and the next big target to hit is 763.035 mph, which is the fastest-ever land speed record set by driver Andy Green back in 1997. And then it’s on to the big four-digit leagues.

I think it’s safe to say that getting to 500 mph was the easy part. There’s a reason why no one has beaten Green’s record in the last 22 years, and that’s because it’s really freakin’ hard to design and build a machine capable of going that fast without everything falling apart. But if there’s anyone who can do it, it’s going to be this crew.