K. Alex, director, ISRO Satellite Centre, said: 'The solar panels got deployed as planned. Signals from the satellite have been picked up from our stations in Antarctica and other places.'

Designed to last five years, the cuboid shaped Oceansat-2 will study the oceans' interactions with the atmosphere. Oceansat-2 will be used for identifying potential fishing zones, sea-state forecasting, coastal zone studies, weather forecasting and climate studies.

The data will be used by India and will also have a good international market. Bulk of the revenue of Antrix is from selling remote sensing data.

Terming many news reports about the country's first moon mission as 'mysterious', K. Radhakrishnan, director, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, said: 'As far as we are concerned the mission is 100 percent successful. Anomalies are not uncommon and the problem needs to be studied in depth.'

Speaking about the next moon mission, he added: 'We have completed the satellite design. It will have an Orbiter and a Lander. We plan to take samples of the moon surface for analysis and transmit the data.'

He said Chandrayaan-2 will be launched by 2012 or 2013.

With the launch of Oceansat-2, ISRO now has 10 remote-sensing satellites in orbit. The others are IRS 1D, Resourcesat 1, TES, Cartosat 1, 2 and 2A, IMS 1, RISAT and Oceansat-1.

The other remote sensing satellites slated for launch are the Radar Imaging Satellite and Resourcesat-2.

Vice-President Hamid Ansari, who witnessed the blast-off, congratulated the ISRO team for the successful launch.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also congratulated the scientists for the successful Oceansat-2 launch, saying it would 'herald a new beginning in our understanding of the oceans'.

Switzerland is happy with the successful launch of its first satellite and hopes to launch its second Cubesat, which is under development, also from here.

'This is our first satellite and we are happy that it is launched successfully. The satellite was built at a cost of 400,000 euros by an educational institution in Switzerland,' Silva Hostettler, executive director, State Secretariat for Education and Research, Embassy of Switzerland, told IANS here.