BANGALORE: India successfully launched its first mini space shuttle on Monday as New Delhi's famously frugal space agency joined the global race to make rockets as reusable as airplanes.
The shuttle was reportedly developed on a budget of just one billion rupees ($14 million), a fraction of the billions of dollars spent by other nations' space programmes.
The Reusable Launch Vehicle, or RLV-TD, which is around the size of a minibus, hurtled into a blue sky over southeast India after its 7:00am (0130 GMT) lift off.
After reaching an altitude of about 70 kilometres (43 miles), it glided back down to Earth, splashing into the Bay of Bengal 10 minutes later.
The test mission was a small but crucial step towards eventually developing a full-size, reusable version of the shuttle to make space travel easier and cheaper in the future.
"We have successfully accomplished the RLV mission as a technology demonstrator," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) spokesman Devi Prasad Karnik told AFP.
The worldwide race for reuseable rockets intensified after NASA retired its space shuttle programme in 2011.
They are seen as key to cutting costs and waste in the space industry, which currently loses millions of dollars in jettisoned machinery after each launch.
Internet tycoon Elon Musk's SpaceX and Blue Origin of Amazon owner Jeff Bezos have already successfully carried out their own test launches.
Musk told reporters in April that it currently costs about $300,000 to fuel a rocket and about $60 million to build one.
SpaceX first landed its powerful Falcon 9 rocket in December while Blue Origin's New Shepard successfully completed a third launch and vertical landing in April this year.
But ISRO hopes to develop its own version, primarily to cash in on the huge and lucrative demand from other countries to send up their satellites.
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