This Indian startup is reaching for the moon

Rahul Narayan, co-founder of TeamIndus

TeamIndus, a Bengaluru-based space startup, has embarked on a dream mission - to land the first Indian on the moon in 10 to 12 years.
"Challenging, but possible. If everything goes as we have planned, we can have our first astronaut on the moon as early as 2027 or by 2030," says Rahul Narayan, co-founder of TeamIndus.

However, the startup, which is building India's first privately funded spacecraft, has an imminent deadline to meet - to launch the spacecraft by the end of December 2017 and land on the moon's surface, and let a rover roam on its surface by March 2018.

Speaking to Khaleej Times at the Startup India Summit in Dubai, Narayan, who in his earlier avatar was a software worker, said the $70 million moon mission is being funded through payload fees, sponsorship and 'Moonshot Wheels' competition.

Moonshot Wheels, flagged off by Ratan Tata in Bengaluru early this year, is a bus which will traverse the country with an aim to inspire the next generation about India's first private moon mission. 'Moonshot Wheels' has a Moonshot Capsule that will be filled with the aspirations of the children the bus meets on its journey. These aspirations will then fly aboard the TeamIndus Spacecraft as a metaphor of how their lives can take flight.

ISRO help
TeamIndus space adventurists, numbering almost 100, will launch its spacecraft with the help of the Indian space agency's (Indian Space Research Organisation) Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle rocket. The PSLV, in just 12 minutes from launch, will take the spacecraft to an orbit of 880km x 70,000km around the Earth, said Narayan.

TeamIndus is the only Indian team competing in Google Lunar Xprize competition offering $30 million prize money. Narayan said the global competition by Google is to challenge and inspire engineers and entrepreneurs to develop low-cost methods for robotic space exploration.

To win, a privately funded team must successfully pace a robot on the moon that explores at least 500 metres and transmits high definition video and image back to Earth.

He said none of the founding team at TeamIndus has a space background or deep pockets.

To plan a mission to the Moon, most people would assemble a team of experienced space experts. This isn't the case if you are from TeamIndus. When TeamIndus started on its mission some six years ago, one of the first things it did was to Google 'How to build a rocket'.

As the 80-odd engineers work on their space mission, they are also creating a startup of a kind never seen in India: an aerospace company that has the capability to design satellites with minimum costs and tight deadlines.

- issacjohn@khaleejtimes.com