India marked its presence on Moon on Friday night to become only the fourth nation to scale this historic milestone after a Moon Impact Probe with the national Tricolour painted successfully landed on the lunar surface after being detached from unmanned spacecraft Chandrayaan-1.

Once Chandrayaan-1 reached the designated lunar orbit, it re-oriented itself for this special task.

An instrument, about the size of a computer monitor and so far carried piggyback by the Chandrayaan-1, was released from 100 kilometres above the moon.

The instrument struck the moon's surface at a designated spot in 25 minutes. During the journey it took images of the moon and sent back data to the mother ship before it crashed into pieces.

But before that, the probe symbolically placed the Indian flag on the lunar surface making history.

The moon probe landed in the Shackleton crater named after Ernest Shackleton, a noted explorer of the Antarctic. It lies at the south pole of the moon.

The peaks along the crater rim are exposed to almost continual sunlight, while the interior is perpetually in shadow.