Seoul, South Korea today successfully launched its first homegrown space rocket, local officials said, a triumph that boosted the country’s growing space ambitions but also proved it has key technologies to build a space-based surveillance system and bigger missiles.

The three-stage Nuri rocket succeeded in releasing and placing its functioning “performance verification” satellite at a target altitude of 700 kilometers (435 miles) from South Korea’s space launch center on a southern island, the Korean Science Ministry said.

The launch has made South Korea the world’s 10th nation to place a satellite into space with its own technology.

South Korea, the world’s 10th-largest economy, is a main supplier of semiconductors, automobiles and smartphones on world markets.

Source: Oman News Agency