India launched its first mission to the moon Wednesday, rocketing a satellite up into the pale dawn sky in a two-year mission to redraw maps of the lunar surface.

"Lift off is normal," said mission control as the Chandrayaan-1 blasted off from the Sriharikota space center in southern India. Chandrayaan means "Moon Craft" in ancient Sanskrit.

Scientists, clapping and cheering, tracked the ascent on computer screens as they lost sight of the rocket in heavy clouds that covered the launch pad.

Chief among the mission's goals is mapping not only the surface of the moon, but what lies beneath. Scientists have better maps of distant Mars than the moon, where astronauts have walked. But India now hopes to change that.

India plans to use the 3,080-pound lunar probe to create a high-resolution map of the lunar surface and what minerals are below. Two of the mapping instruments are a joint project with NASA.

If the mission is successful, India will join what's shaping up as a 21st century space race with Chinese and Japanese crafts already in orbit around the moon.

The United States, which won the 1960s race to send men to the moon, will not jump into this race with its new lunar probe until next spring, but it is providing key mapping equipment for India's mission.

To date only the U.S., Russia, the European Space Agency, Japan and China have sent missions to the moon.

NASA has put probes on Mars' frigid polar region, but not on the rugged poles of the moon. Yet the moon's south pole is where NASA is considering setting up an eventual human-staffed lunar outpost, Pace said.

The moon's south pole is "certainly more rugged than where Neil Armstrong landed. It's more interesting. It's more dangerous," Pace said. "We need better maps."

And while the moon race in the 1960s was a two-country sprint between the United States and the U.S.S.R, more countries are involved this time. China, in particular, has been forging ahead in space.
India is also collaborating closely with other countries on the mission.

Of the 11 instruments carried by the satellite, five are Indian, three are from the European Space Agency, two from the U.S. including radar that can search for ice under lunar poles - and one from Bulgaria.

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