The largest rocket to blast off from the British mainland has launched from Northumberland for a test flight, fuelling hopes that it could pave the way for commercial flights into space.

Built and privately funded by the Manchester-based firm Starchaser, the Skybolt 2 successfully fired into the sky from the back of a converted flatbed truck in Otterburn, a village 31 miles north-west of Newcastle in the usually tranquil Northumberland national park.

The 8.2-metre (27ft) carbon-fibre reusable rocket then broke into three pieces and returned to earth. The managing director of Starchaser, Steve Bennett, said: “We’re really pleased with that launch, the rocket went really well, it flew nice and high, exactly as it should do.”

Designed to fly more than 100km (62 miles) to the edge of space, Skybolt 2 is part of a scheme to test and develop space tourism rockets of the future.

Onboard was a science project from Sheffield Hallam University, commercial cargo, a number of video cameras and a stuffed toy dog called Sam – launched on behalf of Morecambe Bay primary school on the Lancashire coast.

Bennett, who started the space tourism firm 25 years ago, said: “We’ve built and launched some big rockets and it’s been a long hard road but we’re nearly there and we’re just a couple years away from launching people on holidays into space.”

Despite some huge players in the space tourism market, such as SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, Bennett said he was confident his firm would have a part to play. “One of the things we want to do is make space tourism a reality, we want to be launching people into space and this rocket was carrying various systems and experiments that will allow us to do that.

“Space tourism is a big cake and there’s a slice for everyone. There’s some people out there with a little bit more money than us but we’ve got a fantastic team of people, we’ve got the University of Chester behind us and we’re going to make this happen.”

Skybolt 2 is sponsored by the University of Chester, where Nick Avis, the pro-vice-chancellor of research and knowledge transfer, congratulated Bennett on his “fantastic milestone”.

The rocket will now tour thousands of schools as part of an educational outreach programme. Bennett is shooting for the stars with his next project: Nova 2 is “a 12-metre rocket big enough to carry a person” and is intended to launch within the next 18 months.

• This article was amended on 22 September 2017 because Otterburn is north-west of Newcastle, not north-east as an earlier version said.

