ISRO officials had told IANS that the test model reusable launch vehicle would be mounted on a strap-on solid booster of PSLV rocket with 9-tonne fuel.

At an altitude of 70 km, the model would get separated and would glide back to earth. The descent speed would be around 2 km per second.

"The descent speed would be controlled through the fins on the machine. In order to protect the equipment from friction heat when it comes back, necessary protective tiles are fixed," the ISRO official had told IANS.

The experimental vehicle would weigh around 1.5 tonne which is a far cry from the actual vehicle that is expected to carry a satellite.

In December 2014, ISRO sent up a 3.7 tonne giant cup cake shaped module - called Crew Module Atmospheric Re-entry Experiment - to study its re-entry characteristics, aero-braking and validation of its end-to-end parachute system.

A 630-tonne rocket went up to 126 km when the crew capsule got detached and fell into the Bay of Bengal, 20 minutes after the blast off.

The descent speed of the crew module was controlled by three parachutes.

However, the aircraft shaped vehicle will not have any parachutes to control the descent speed but the fins and other parts would do so.