The European Space Agency (ESA) will soon launch an experimental vehicle dubbed XIV in an effort to analyze reusable spacecraft technology and autonomous reentry software.

Departing from French Guiana on Feb. 11 at 8 a.m. ET, the XIV is equipped with over three hundred sensors dedicated to monitoring the integrity of the ship’s hull. The Vega rocket will propel the vehicle to a suborbital altitude of around four-hundred kilometers before it separates and descends back to Earth.

As XIV hurtles towards the planet’s surface, its design will lift the front tip of the craft.

“The XIV has a lifting body shape,” said Programme Manager Roberto Angelini in an informational ESA video. “This allows the vehicle to be guided during its reentry.”

On the back end of the XIV, flaps similar in appearance to the pedals of a car will guide the spacecraft during its return.

All in all, the mission will last close to two hours, testing environmental pressures and structural fortitude while XIV travels at 7.5 kilometers per second, heated to 1600 degrees Celsius.

XIV will use a simple parachute to decelerate, until it lands in the ocean, buoyed by flotation devices.

The vehicle features new materials that the ESA, designed to minimize damage to the ship.

The ESA believes that the data collected during the mission will assist in future planetary exploration and help return extra-terrestrial samples back to earth as well as sending astronauts into space. Researchers ultimately hope to develop spacecraft with “reusable launcher stages,” streamlining the timeframe for missions.

XIV is the successor to the 1998 launch of the Atmospheric Reentry Demonstrator (ARD), which sent over two-hundred “critical parameters” for the analysis of contemporary equipment.

This research is leading towards heat-resistant, autonomous spacecraft with excellent maneuverability capabilities.

“Reentry technology is something that Europe has to master,” said ESA Programme Manager Giorgio Tumino.