India is poised to become the world's sixth space power, and Asia's third, to send a probe to the moon. If all goes well, Chandrayaan-1 - "moon vehicle" in Sanskrit and Hindi - will survey the moon's minerals, search for water and chart a 3-D atlas of its surface.

Chandrayaan-1 is set to rise today from a Sriharikota launch pad, in the Bay of Bengal, and soar into a looping orbit reaching 36,000 kilometres above the Earth.

Over the next three weeks the 590-kilogram probe's altitude will be steadily nudged higher until it cuts across the moon's path. Chandrayaan-1 will then fire a rocket motor, slowing just enough to be captured by the moon's gravity.

The most ambitious mission yet by the Indian Space Research Organisation, it will circle the moon for two years and jettison a 29-kilogram "impact probe" that will crash into the surface as a pathfinder for future landers.

India hopes Chandrayaan-1 will help throw off the country's image as a poverty-stricken nation, pointing instead to its race to become another Asian space and technology superpower.

In September last year Japan rocketed its Kaguya probe into lunar orbit, beaming back the first high-definition television pictures of the Earth from another world. It was followed a month later by Chang'e, China's first moon mission.

China, which plans to land an unmanned rover on the moon within 10 years, has already put six astronauts into space. India's space agency has proposed launching its own manned spacecraft in the next decade.

Britain's Guardian newspaper reported yesterday that Chandrayaan-1's objectives include mapping the moon's supply of helium-3, a potential fuel for future fusion power reactors.

Although helium-3 is rare on Earth, a former Indian space agency director, Professor U.R.Rao, was quoted as saying the moon might have enough "to produce energy for 8000 years".

In 2006 China's Chang'e project leader told the China Daily that "each year three space shuttle missions could bring enough [helium-3] for all human beings across the world".

As well as five Indian-made instruments, including two cameras, the crash lander, and a laser to measure the moon's topography to within 10 metres, Chandrayaan-1 will carry six experiments made by Germany, Sweden, Bulgaria, the United States and the European Space Agency. The US equipment includes a radar to map the surface and a device to survey its minerals.

The US intends to launch the unmanned Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, its first step in returning astronauts to the moon by 2020, early next year.