Yes, but it was passengerless, planned for months, ensured there was nothing that could possibly endanger the mission like bad weather, (etc and all that stuff I mentioned), and everyone and everything was arrange to be out of the way.
It was acceptable to fly it REMOTELY because there was no-one on board, so if there was a problem/malfunction they couldn't deal with, well they could just crash it with no loss of human life. Being the very high risk of the mission it made more sense to do it this way.
AND, I say again. Remote controlled airplanes are not new.