South Korea's first domestically built space rocket blasted off on Thursday (October 21) in a test launch that represents a major leap for the country's ambitious space plans.

The three-stage KSLV-II Nuri rocket, emblazoned with the national flag, carried a dummy satellite on its launch from the Naro Space Center at 5 p.m. (0800 GMT), video provided by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) showed.

The Nuri, or "world", rocket is designed to put 1.5-tonne payloads into orbit 600 km to 800 km (373 miles to 497 miles) above Earth, as part of a broader space effort that envisages the launch of satellites for surveillance, navigation, and communications, and even lunar probes.

Space launches have long been a sensitive issue on the Korean peninsula, where North Korea faces sanctions over its nuclear-armed ballistic missile programme.

South Korea has risen from the ashes of war to become the world's 12th-largest economy and a technologically advanced nation, home to the planet's biggest smartphone and memory chip maker, Samsung Electronics.

But it has lagged in the headline-making world of spaceflight, where the Soviet Union led the way with the first satellite launch in 1957, closely followed by the United States.

In Asia, China, Japan and India all have advanced space programmes, and the South's nuclear-armed neighbour North Korea was the most recent entrant to the club of countries with their own satellite launch capability.

The three-stage Nuri rocket has been a decade in development at a cost of 2 trillion won (US$1.6 billion). It weighs 200 tonnes and is 47.2m long, fitted with a total of six liquid-fuelled engines.

Source: Reuters