The state-run CCTV station broadcast images of the Change (pronounced Chang-er) 1 blasting off on schedule from the Xichang space centre in southern Sichuan province into cloudy skies.
Thousands of local residents were moved from the launch site before the probe took off on the back of a Long March rocket.
The launch was preceded by a volley of propaganda about national unity and the growing power of China. The vessel will broadcast patriotic songs into space as it makes its way towards entering moon orbit on November 5.
Named after a legendary goddess who flew to the moon, Change is on a one-year mission to create three-dimensional maps of the surface and analyse lunar dust using stereo cameras and x-ray spectrometers. The first images will be transmitted back to Earth in the second half of November.
The orbiter is the first phase of a 1.4 billion yuan (£95m) lunar programme that aims to land an unmanned rover on the surface by 2012 and put a man on the moon before 2020.
It is part of a new space race among Asian powers that is making space more crowded with manmade objects than ever before.
Japan launched its first moon probe last month. India plans a similar lunar mission next spring.
The US remains dominant. Its prowess was demonstrated this week with the take-off of the space shuttle Discovery.
But China has made up a lot of ground. Since its first manned space flight in 2003, it has repeated the feat and announced plans for a space laboratory, a spacewalk and even the formation of a Communist party cell in space.
Beijing insists its intentions are peaceful, but it shocked the world earlier this year with the successful test of an anti-satellite missile. The Change probe, like all space missions, is being run by the military.
Scientists in charge of the programme said the lunar probe was being launched for research. They also emphasised the significance of the mission in terms of China's rising place in the world.
"As lunar exploration embodies our overall national strength, it is very significant for raising our international prestige and our national unity," the chief scientist, Ouyang Ziyuan, told the state-run People's Daily newspaper.
Local people said they were proud. "The Change project makes China more confident than before," said Dai Lu, a Beijing resident. "A hundred years ago, China was not involved in the first and second technological revolution, and it was bullied by advanced countries. So technological development is important for China's stability."