New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed ISRO for successfully conducting the Reusable Launch Vehicle Autonomous Landing Mission (RLV LEX) on Sunday. On this occasion Modi said that this achievement takes India one step closer to realising an Indian reusable launch vehicle.

ISRO in a statement said that the test was conducted at the Aeronautical Test Range (ATR) at Chitradurga in Karnataka. ISRO successfully achieved the autonomous landing of a space vehicle. With LEX, the dream of an Indian Reusable Launch Vehicle arrives one step closer to reality, said ISRO.

Modi said in a tweet on the development said that it is a great team effort. This achievement takes us one step closer to realising an Indian Reusable Launch Vehicle. In a first in the world, a winged body has been carried to an altitude of 4.5 km by a helicopter and released for carrying out an autonomous landing on a runway. RLV is essentially a space plane with a low lift-to-drag ratio requiring an approach at high glide angles that necessitates a landing at high velocities of 350 km/h.