NEW DELHI — India successfully launched a scale model of a reusable spacecraft on Monday, a project that in time could pit the nation against billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk in the race to make access to space cheaper and easier.

The winged vessel — one-fifth of full size — blasted off on a rocket from Sriharikota base on the southeastern coast, the Indian Space Research Organization said. The spacecraft reached an altitude of 40 miles and glided back at supersonic speeds for a splashdown in the Bay of Bengal. The test took about 13 minutes.

India put a probe into the Mars orbit in 2014 for just $74 million, demonstrating a combination of technological capability and low costs that meshes with the goal of more frequent space travel being championed by Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. and Bezos’s Blue Origin.

Both companies seek to curb costs by making rockets reusable, and are conducting test launches more often.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated the space research unit for successfully launching the nation’s ‘‘first indigenous space shuttle.’’

Asia’s No. 3 economy plans to spend about $1.1 billion on its entire space program in the year through March 2017, a fraction of the yearly $19 billion budget of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the United States.

The reusable space vehicle is supposed to provide a cost-effective and reliable option for operations such as launching satellites.

Bloomberg News