India on Wednesday launched its first mission to the moon with a "perfect" lift-off of the unmanned Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, placing the country among a select group of nations that have sent lunar missions.

The 44-metre tall Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV C11) rocket carrying the Chandrayaan probe lifted off at 0622 local time (0052 GMT) from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, 80 kilometres north of the southern Chennai city.

The Indian Space Research Organization chief G Madhavan Nair described it as a "historic moment" as scientists congratulated each other at the space port.

"India has started its journey to the moon," Nair said after the launch, adding "The first leg has gone perfectly well. The spacecraft has been launched into orbit."

The Chandrayaan, which means moon craft in Sanskrit, aims to prepare a three-dimensional atlas of the moon, map the distribution of elements and minerals below the lunar surface and look for water deposits in its polar regions.

A 3.86-billion-rupee (79-million-dollar) project, the Chandrayaan carries 11 experimental payloads, of which five have been developed by ISRO and six by the European Space Agency, United States' NASA and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

The solar-powered Chandrayaan, cuboid in shape and weighs 1,380 kilogrammes, also includes a moon impact probe, that will crash into the moon and place the Indian national flag on the lunar surface, staking the South Asian country's claims to the moon.

The mission would also be significant because it would investigate the presence of helium-3 an isotope, believed to be abundant on the moon and sought for nuclear fusion research and energy generation.

ISRO scientists said the PSLV rocket placed Chandrayaan into an "transfer orbit" around the earth, some 19 minutes after lift-off.

The spacecraft will make a few revolutions around the earth and later fire its onboard liquid apogee motor (LAM) which will give it enough momentum to take it in the lunar orbit, 387,000 kilometres from earth by November 8.

It's speed will then be reduced to enable the gravity of the moon to capture it in an elliptical orbit at a height of 100 kilometres. This would mark the operational phase of the mission from when the spacecraft would conduct its studies for two years.

"Today what we have started is a remarkable journey for an Indian spacecraft to go to the moon and try to unravel the mysteries of the earth's closest celestial body and its only natural satellite," Nair said.

Indian scientists said the mission will be a major step toward building India's technological capability and will help New Delhi catch up in a 21st-century space race with Chinese and Japanese spacecraft already orbiting the moon.

It will also lay the foundation for building India's capacities to undertake inter-planetary missions in the coming years.

There have been more than 65 manned and unmanned missions to the moon in the past five decades - a majority of them launched by US and the erstwhile Soviet Union.

India's lunar mission comes at time when there is a renewed interest in the moon as space-faring countries have started planning missions to study its resources and use it as a base for space exploration.

The ESA undertook a lunar mission from 2003 to 2006 with SMART-1 (Small Missions for Advanced Research in Technology).

China and Japan launched their respective moon missions Chang'e and Kaguya last year while NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is due for a launch in spring next year. All these missions are to orbit the moon to carry out studies.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh currently on an official visit to Japan, congratulated the scientists for the successful launch of Chandrayaan-1.

"The successful launch of the Chandrayaan-1 marks the first step in what we hope will be a historic milestone in India's space programme," he said.

India's tryst with space began with the formation of its space agency in 1962. Thirteen years later, India launched its first space satellite, Aryabhatta. In 1984, India sent Rakesh Sharma as its first cosmonaut to the Soviet space station Salyut-7.

In recent years, India concentrated much of its space development on sophisticated satellites, aiming to capture a part of the global commercial satellite launch market.

Chandrayaan-1 is expected to be a stepping stone for the 2011 unmanned Chandrayaan-2 mission, a collaboration between Indian's and Russia's space agencies, which would include a lander and a rover.

ISRO has plans to send two astronauts for a week-long space flight by 2015 which will be followed by the country's first manned mission to the moon by 2020.