The country staged a flawless launch Wednesday of its first unmanned lunar orbiting spacecraft Chandrayaan-1 -- the Sanskrit word for Moon Craft -- with an Indian-built rocket from its southeastern coast.

"The launch has considerable political significance as it's an assertion of India's credibility in the area of space exploration," said New Delhi-based strategic analyst Uday Bhaskar.

If all goes to plan, the 1.5-tonne satellite should be flying over the pockmarked lunar surface November 11. It's being sent on a two-year mission to map in-depth the moon's topography and its mineral and chemical properties.

The launch, greeted with chest-thumping patriotism, "demonstrated the nation's growing technological potential," said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

India sees the space journey as further boosting its diplomatic weight in the wake of the recent deal on civilian atomic cooperation with the United States that ended its nuclear pariah status.

The main exploration goal of the thrifty lunar mission -- it cost just 79 million dollars, less than half that of similar expeditions by other countries -- is to assess and map lunar mineral resources, Indian officials say.

India aims to launch the first Indian into space by 2014 and maybe to put a man on the moon by 2020.

Indian Space Research Organisation head G. Madhavan Nair has said the current mission will "unravel the mystery of the moon." But some analysts argue that enhanced global status was a far stronger motive.

"It's a moustache kind of thing -- and moustache matters," said Jane's Defence Weekly analyst Rahul Bedi, referring to India's national pride.

Asian nations have recently been at the forefront of space exploration -- a field that was previously dominated by the United States, Russia and the European Space Agency.

China, whose space programme is far more advanced than India's, was the first Asian nation five years ago to put its astronauts into space and last month staged a much publicised space walk.

"They (the Indians) are not going to add very much to what is already known," Bedi said.

But the mission represents "a technological evolution of the whole space programme in India. At the same time, India is very competitive in launching satellites and it further cements that reputation," Bedi said.

Initially set up to carry out scientific research, the space research organisation now also earns money from commercial launches with the global market worth an estimated 2.5 billion dollars a year.

Earlier this year, India launched an Israeli spy satellite into space.

At least 16 Indian satellites circle earth, giving support to telephone operators, broadcast outlets, weather forecasters and providing remote education and healthcare.

"If it can prove the cost-effectiveness of its launches, India could be a niche supplier of small launches," noted New Delhi analyst Bhaskar.

India, whose space programme has an annual budget of one billion dollars -- less than a tenth of NASA's -- is ranked as the second most globally competitive behind China by consultancy Futron's space competitiveness index.

But the big question, said Bedi, is whether a country like India needs to spend so heavily on a space missions when it is still struggling to feed millions of impoverished citizens.

Still, he acknowledged, the technology developed by space missions "can have offshoots that can benefit everyone."

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