A launch will allow Seoul build larger missiles.

The three-stage Nuri rocket placed a functioning “performance verification” satellite at a target altitude of 435 miles after its 4 p.m. liftoff from South Korea’s space launch center on a southern island, the Science Ministry said.

The satellite transmitted signals about its status to an unmanned South Korean station in Antarctica. It is carrying four smaller satellites that will be released in coming days for Earth observation and other missions, ministry officials said.

The science and technology of the Republic of Korea have made a great advance, Science Minister Lee Jong-Ho said in a televised news conference at the launch center. The government will continue its audacious march toward becoming a space power together with the people, he added.

In a video conference with scientists and others involved in the launch, recently elected President Yoon Suk Yeol congratulated them for their achievement and vowed to keep his campaign promise to establish a state aerospace agency, according to his office.

Live TV video showed the 154-foot rocket rising into the air amid bright flames and thick white smoke.

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

It was South Korea’s second launch of a Nuri rocket.