"It's one of the rarest phenomena," said G. Madhavan Nair, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

"The problem developed during the first stage which means ... the motor was not developing thrust. The failure was not due to a design flaw."

"The lift-off was normal. But after a few seconds the vehicle did not follow the designed trajectory. It deviated. After about 60 seconds, some parts of the vehicle broke up," Nair said told AFP.

He said the failure of the launch off the coast of the southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh was a "setback" as India had a track record of 11 consecutive successful flights.

"If you look at the launch vehicles' history, failures are not uncommon. The (US) shuttle had failures," Nair said. "We will pinpoint the failure. We will take corrective action. Within a year we will have the GSLV up again."

The 49-metre (161-foot) rocket, called the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV), carried a 2,168-kilogram (2.4 ton) INSAT 4-C satellite to be put into stationary orbit at 36,000 kilometres (22,320 miles).

It was programmed to boost television services for the next 10 years.

Disaster struck less than a day after an unsuccessful test flight of India's Agni-III nuclear-capable missile which has a range of 4,000 kilometres (2,480 miles) and is designed to arm New Delhi with a ballistic weapon.

This is the fifth time since 1979 that ISRO failed in its attempt to launch a satellite.

"I am sure the INSAT-4C failure needs careful investigation. We have to unearth the facts," said Roddam Narasimha, a member of India's policy-making Space Commission.

"I don't feel there is something fundamentally wrong with GSLV since the previous two launches were successful. Every failure is a bit of a setback but the Indian space agency's record as a whole is very good," he told AFP.

"The failure of one satellite cannot harm the space research programme."

U.R. Rao, former chief of the Space Commission, said the incident was a "mishap" rather than a setback.

"We will come to know the problem in the next few days. The amount (33 million dollars for the launch) is small compared to other nations' budget," he said.

"At this point it is important to remember that India has had very few failures in space research programmes and this does not mean a halt. We have a long way to go," Rao said.

India has nine other communication satellites with 175 transponders in operation, making it the largest domestic communication satellite system in the Asia-Pacific and the world's biggest civilian cluster of remote-sensing satellites.

Indian scientists, citing preliminary data, blamed snags in the separation process in both the two-stage Agni and the three-stage GSLV as the cause of their failures.

Indian Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee said a probe will be launched into the Agni failure. "There will a thorough enquiry and the setbacks will be corrected," Mukherjee said.

"There has been a setback but the scale of the setback should be placed in context because countries before India who have embarked upon satellite launch business too have gone through a similar learning curve," said Uday Bhaskar, deputy director of the state-funded Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis.

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