Watch The ESA's Car-Sized Shuttle Take Off

This week the European Space Agency's Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV) took off on a Vega rocket. This takeoff sequence was done at the European Spaceport in French Guiana on Wednesday (February 11th) at 8:40 a.m. EST (1340 GMT). This craft was a prototype for a reusable orbiter, prepared to move passengers into space in the future. Below you'll be able to watch this spacecraft take off successfully, heading 340 km into space not long after its initial launch earlier this morning. This system precedes a program called PRIDE: Program for Reusable In-orbit Demonstrator for Europe.

This test is one of several considered "intermediate" for the ESA. It isn't a full mission, that is to say, it's more like an in-between missions sort of deal. The last time a similar program was launched was in 1998 with the ESA's Atmospheric Reentry Demonstrator (ARD).

According to the ESA, this mission "aims to test under representative flight conditions the performance of critical systems and technologies aspects that enable autonomous controlled reentry for return missions from low Earth orbit."

Eventually the ESA hopes to use this new system to transport a potentially vast collection of items (and people) into space. Space planes could potentially be transported, along with reusable launchers stages, planetary probes, sample return, cargo, and crew transport vehicles.

The vehicle itself is 5-meters long, 2.2-meters wide, and 1.5-meters tall. Similar in size to an automobile, this craft weighs in at around 2-tons, including fuel.

Initial mission results are expected to be made public in the second quarter of this year, 2015. Until then, watch this vehicle take off as often as you do so please.