The shape of Hermes had been effectively frozen by November 1985. This shape had been largely devised by subsonic wind tunnel testing in the Onera, as the spaceplane was largely constrained by the requirements of subsonic flight. In order to gather valuable data in the face of Europe's lack of experience at operating such vehicles, Dassault proposed validating the aerodynamic properties of the vehicle by completing an 1 • 4-tonne, 1-scale aerothermal demonstrator, named "Maia", which was envisaged as being launched by an Ariane 4 for re-entry studies.