South Korea launched its first domestically built space rocket on Tuesday in the country's second attempt, months after its earlier liftoff failed to place a payload into orbit.

A successful launch would boost South Korea's growing space ambitions but also prove it has key technologies to build a space-based surveillance system and bigger missiles amid animosities with rival North Korea, some experts say.

The three-stage Nuri rocket carrying what officials call a functioning "performance verification" satellite blasted from South Korea's only space launch center on a small island off its southern coast at 4 p.m.

Officials are to announce the results of the launch later Tuesday.

In the first attempt last October, the rocket's dummy payload reached its desired altitude of 700 kilometers (435 miles) but didn't enter orbit because the engine of the rocket's third stage burned out earlier than planned.

If Tuesday's launch is successful, South Korea would become 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.

NASA's fourth attempt to complete a critical test of its Moon rocket achieved around 90 percent of its goals, but there's still no firm date for the behemoth's first flight, officials said Tuesday.

Known as the "wet dress rehearsal" because it involves loading liquid propellant, it is the final item to cross off the checklist before the Artemis-1 mission slated for this summer: an uncrewed lunar flight that will eventually be followed by Moon boots on the ground, likely no sooner than 2026.

Teams at the Kennedy Space Center began their latest effort to complete the exercise on Saturday.

Their objectives were to load propellant into the rocket's tanks, conduct a launch countdown and simulate contingency scenarios, then drain the tanks.

The mission's team has chosen to operate its seismometer longer than previously planned, although the lander will run out of power sooner as a result.

As the power available to NASA's InSight Mars lander diminishes by the day, the spacecraft's team has revised the mission's timeline in order to maximize the science they can conduct.