KOUROU, French Guiana, Jan 23 (Reuters) - Western Europe's 147th Ariane rocket placed a communications satellite for India into orbit after a launch from equatorial French Guiana late on Wednesday.

The Ariane 42L rocket equipped with two liquid strap-on boosters blasted off at 8:46 p.m. (2346 GMT) from the European Space Agency (ESA) launch centre in Kourou, French Guiana, on the northeast coast of South America.

Space officials said the INSAT 3-C satellite separated from the rocket 21 minutes after lift-off.

The satellite will provide telecommunications and TV transmission services for the Indian subcontinent.

INSAT 3-C weighed 2.8 tonnes at launch and was built in Bangalore, India, by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). It is designed to operate in geostationary orbit for more than 12 years.

ISRO Project Director R.K. Rajangan, told Reuters after the launch that the cost of the INSAT 3-C satellite was approximately $50 million. "This is about one-third of the cost of a comparable satellite built in the U.S. or Europe."

He said launch costs for the Ariane rocket exceeded $70 million.

Wednesday's flight was the 108th launch of an Ariane-4 rocket and its 66th consecutive successful flight.

Ariane-4 was put into service in 1988 and has failed only three times. It is built in six different versions for launches of communications satellite payloads of up to five tonnes.

Arianespace, the French company that launches and markets Ariane rockets, said it had firm orders to launch 49 satellites and nine automated transfer vehicles for the International Space Station. The launch contracts are worth an estimated $4.7 billion. Nampa-Reuters