The Electron rocket lifts off on the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand. Source: Rocket Lab This week, Rocket Lab, the New Zealand-based commercial space vendor, launched its Electron rocket for the first time, successfully reaching space.

The company claims this is the first time an orbital-class rocket has launched from a private launch site in the world.

“We’re one of a few companies to ever develop a rocket from scratch and we did it in under four years,” said Peter Beck, CEO and founder of Rocket Lab. “We’ve worked tirelessly to get to this point. We’ve developed everything in house, built the world’s first private orbital launch range, and we’ve done it with a small team.”

The rocket lifted-off at 4:20 p.m. on Thursday from the Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 on the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand, reaching space three minutes later.

The Electron rocket is based on Rocket Lab’s Rutherford engine, an oxygen/kerosene hybrid device that the company used 3-D printing for all the primary components. Rocket Lab says it took 24 hours to print the engine. The first stage of lift off is power by nine Rutherford engines burning at a lift-off thrust of 162 newtons and reaching a peak thrust of 192 newtons.

During the test flight, Electron completed a first stage burn, a stage separation and second stage ignition and fairing separation.

“We didn’t quite reach orbit and we’ll be investigating why, however reaching space in our first test puts us in an incredibly strong position to accelerate the commercial phase of our program, deliver our customers to orbit and make space open for business,” Beck said.

The launch is the first of three test flights scheduled this year and Rocket Lab says it will target getting the Electron rocket into orbit in the second test and to look to maximize the payload the rocket can carry. The company plans to take the data learned from this launch to optimize future flights.

At full production, Rocket Labs expects to launch more than 50 times a year and is regulated to launch up to 120 times a year. By comparison, there were 22 launches in 2016 from the U.S. and 82 launches internationally. Rocket Labs says it has already signed on NASA, Spire, Planet, Moon Express and Spaceflight as customers for its commercial business.