MOON MISSION

FRIDAY MORNING, DOMLUR, BANGALORE.

I am outside a room on the third floor of an office
building, along with 30 others. They stand in a
There are many XPrizes in many fields (the Ansari XPrize
for building a manned spacecraft, the Archon Genomics
XPrize, the Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPrize, etc.), and
the GLXP is Google's contribution to space exploration. The
GLXP task, spelled out on its website, is this: "To win the
grand prize, private teams (with no more than 10% in govern-
ment funding) must: Land a robot safely on the moon; move
500 m on, above, or below the moon's surface; and send back
HDTV moon casts for everyone to enjoy." The first team to do
this by the end of 2015 will win the big purse, and possibly
million-dollar aerospace projects; there are prizes for the
1
runner-up, as well as a host of bonus prizes including one for
the team that sends back images of historic lunar sites, such as
the landing area of Apollo 11, the first manned moon mission.
1 Last year, "milestone prizes" were announced for teams that
demonstrate key technologies before the launch.
loose circle, and each one takes a few minutes to tell '
the others what he or she has been doing and what's
to be done. One of them takes notes, and later
It's all incredibly difficult-and hugely expensive. Only three
countries have so far managed a soft landing on the moon-the
U.S., Russia (back when it was the U.S.S.R), and China. A soft
landing is complex, involving hovering above the moon's sur-
face, and decelerating to negligible speeds before making con-
tact vvith the surface. Most countries that have sent craft to the
moon- including the Moon Impact Probe on Chandrayaan-1,
India's indigenously developed moon mission, launched by the
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), in late 2008-
have made hard landings; shorn of jargon, this means that the
craft crashes into the moon. It's a little less complicated than
shows me that 290 action points, including finalis-
ing suppliers for fuel tanks, had been brought up.
This is a daily meeting, and has to happen outside
the room because there's no space inside for all of
them to gather.
Those 30 form Team Indus-India's yet unsung
private moon mission. The office belongs to com-
munication technology firm Sasken, which lent
space to Team Indus some 18 months ago. Most
Sasken employees don't know what goes on in that
room. I am among the few outsiders who know
that Team Indus exists. What do they do? They are
trying to get a craft on the moon next year. Really?
As pedestrian, everyday as that? Well, if you were
to ask any of the 30, the answer is "Oh yeah".
Team Indus, which calls itself a "non-conformist,
unconventional alliance of entrepreneurs and
explorers", is a startup with big dreams. It's one of
32 teams-and the only Indian one-registered
for the $40 million (Rs 240 crore) Google Lunar
XPrize (GLXP). XPrize, founded by American
entrepreneur Peter Diamandis, is based on the
idea that "radical breakthroughs for the benefit
of humanity" can happen by tapping into the
competitive spirit inherent in people. The theory:
Competition incentivises innovation.
a soft landing, but still involves extremely fine calculations to
figure out exactly where to crash.
The process is roughly this: A craft powered by a rocket en-
gine is put into orbit by a satellite launch vehicle (India has the
PSLV and GSLV; Europe has Ariane; China, Long March; the
U.S. has Falcon, Pegasus, Delta, and more). The rocket engine
takes over once the craft is launched, enters lunar orbit, and
lands (or crashes) on the moon. The landing craft then rolls
free and begins to send back data to the control station.
The GLXP teams will have to develop a lander system
(to control a soft landing); a mobility system (to control the
craft's movement); and an imaging system (to send HD media
content t o earth). While they are free to make their own launch
vehicles, most teams are looking at hitching a ride on existing
launchers. This is where Team Indus has an advantage: The
Indian space workhorse, the PSLV, is known to be among the
cheapest 'space taxis' in the world. Team Indus is discussing
the launch details \\ith ISRO's commercial arm, Antrix.
When gmemments set up moon missions, the money
involved is huge. from S80 million in 2008 (which is what
ISRO's unmanned Chandrayaan 1 is estimated to have cost)
to $20 billion in the 1960s (the U.S. Apollo mission). Rahul
Narayan, Team Ind co-founder, estimates that they' ll need
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around $35 million. This includes the cost of mission and
systems design, cost of goods, testing, and launch and mission
control. Around two-thirds of this amount is earmarked for the
launch on PSLV, which is the most eA'J)ensive part of a moon
mission, although not necessarily the most complex.
Typically, manpower costs are low; typical, because ISRO
scientists are willing to work at bargain basement salaries.
Team Indus has a handful of ex-ISRO hands offering direction
and leadership-some for no pay.
The show is now run on funds bootstrapped by the founders
and on donations by individuals, though the names of these
individuals have not been revealed. Pitching to investors isn't
easy. "This almost sounds like a Ponzi scheme, especially when
the pitch is 'I am going to the moon, give me money. I vvill
put your name up there'. Until you feel confident about what
you claim, it always will be a challenge for folks like me;' says
Narayan. Co-founder Julius Arnrit, who was an investment
banker, adds that one of the big challenges is that a large per-
centage of capital available in India isn't mandated to be used
in engineering-led technology startups, like Team Indus, but in
sectors like e-commerce.
What has helped Team Indus is being shortlisted for a
couple of GLXP milestone prizes: The XPrize site says these
prizes "are for demonstrating (via actual testing and analysis)
robust hardware and software to overcome key technical risks
in the areas of imaging, mobility, and lander systems-all three
Team Indus outside their
mission control in Bangalore
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being necessary to achieve a successful Google Lunar XPrize
mission". Team Indus has been shortlisted for the Landing and
Imaging prizes; competitors Astrobotic and Moon Express,
from the U.S., have been chosen for all three categories;
Germany-based Part Time Scientists makes it in two catego-
ries; and Hakuto from Japan in one.
HANDFUL BELIEVE that Team Indus has what
it takes; most write them off as amateurs with a
big dream. India's space programme, under ISRO,
is strong, and there has been little room for
private participation. A couple of years ago, ISRO had stated
that it wanted to outsource part of the lucrative rocket launch
business and satellite manufacturing to private industry. But
after the huge controversy surrounding an ISRO deal with
Devas Multimedia, a private satellite provider, where govern-
ment satellites were apparently given to Devas for its own use,
private participation seems under a cloud.
There are a few private players, including the likes ofEarth-
20rbit, an aerospace firm that provides satellite and launch
services, robotic systems, space consultancy and the like, but
this is not eYen a drop in the ocean when compared to the
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thriving private space industry in the U.S., for instance. Elon
Musk's SpaceX, Bigelow Aerospace, Excalibur Almaz, as well
as defence biggies such as Lockheed Martin, are all closely
linked with America's space programmes.
But despite the U.S. government actively encouraging pri-
vate participation in space exploration, and the meteoric rise of
firms such as SpaceX, there are critics aplenty. Neil Armstrong,
the first man on the moon and commander of the Apollo
11 mission, had spoken before the U.S. Senate against such
privatisation, saying NASA would lose its edge in space not to
private companies but "other nations [which] will surely step
in where we have faltered", as quoted in a report by American
news organisation NPR.
Team Indus is an odd mix. They are a group offriends who
come from software services, marketing, and investment
banking who stumbled on to GLXP. Only one in the five-
member founding group- Rahul Narayan, team lead; Indranil
Chakraborty; Sameer Joshi, special projects lead; Julius Amrit,
investment lead; and Dilip Chabria, marketing lead-has
anything to do with aerospace. Chakraborty, an aerospace
engineer from liT Kharagpur, is the closest spaceman they
have, but even he worked most of his career in industries other
than aerospace.
Like many smart, ambitious people, these friends too had
often discussed the possibility of some day quitting their
jobs and setting up something path breaking together. "In
those days, we were talking about everything from wireless
induction-charging, connected televisions, distributed wind, to
generating power from the flow inside drains;' recalls Chabria.
Nothing about landing on the moon.
That story began in 2009, when Narayan was COO ofNoi-
da-based software services provider Agnicient Technologies.
On one of his projects, he was remotely sharing the desktop of
a client in the U.S., and saw a GLXP poster as the background.
His interest piqued, he dug a little and found out about the
competition. He thought he could offer his services as software
partner if there were Indian teams registered, but there were
none. He reached out to GLXP and asked to be informed if
anyone from India registered.
Late in December 2010, some hours before deadline, GLXP
contacted Narayan. There was no Indian participation, it said.
Would Narayan want to register? Frantic phone calls ensued
to Chakraborty, Joshi, Amrit, and Chabria, grand plans were
drawn up on doodling pads, Axiom Research Labs was set up,
and $50,000 raised to pay the registration fee. With just hours
to spare, Axiom registered with GLXP as Team Indus.
So, here was a team that had absolutely no clue about
moon landing-and was already late to the party. Registra-
tions opened in 2007, so competitors had a three-year head
start. What gave them the confidence that they could reach the
moon? "If it hadn't been for the Chandrayaan-1 mission, we
wouldn't have gone in;' says Narayan.
Zenia Tata, director, global development & international
eA.'J)ansion at XPrize, says it's clear that XPrize appeals to en-
trepreneurs. She could well be talking of Team Indus (though
she doesn't, since the competition is still on), when she says:
"These are serious risk-takers we are talking about here:'
HAT THE XPRIZE and the foundation behind it
is highly respected is evident from their board of
trustees-Elon Musk, Ratan Tata, Ray Kurzweil,
Larry Page, and Diamandis (who is also the
chairman and CEO of the organisation). But what motivates
most of the teams is the opportunity ahead if they deliver.
Winning brings with it the promise of building a business in
the rarefied world of commercial aerospace. The intellectual
property generated by teams doesn't need to be shared with the
XPrize Foundation. The commercial value of such space-based
IP is rising, more so because of a global shift towards increased
private participation in commercial aerospace.
Global economic woes have accelerated this shift, with
NASA opting to use private players like SpaceX and Orbital
Sciences for many of their launches instead of investing bil-
lions of public dollars in e:-.'Pensive programmes. According
to the 2013 report of the Space Foundation, a space resource
organisation, the lobal space economy grew 7% to $304 bil-
lion in 2012. A tudy by London Economics, an international
policy and economi consultancy, conservatively pegs the
value of the commercial opportunities available for the GLXP
teams (all competitors. not j ust winners) between $1.9 billion
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and $6.4 billion over the neAt couple of decades.
Simultaneously, companies like Google have started invest-
ing heavily in space-based businesses. The search giant bought
out satellite company Skybox Imaging for $500 million early
this year, to improve Google Maps. Just a few months earlier,
Face book acquired Ascenta, an aerospace company based in
the U.K. Space is becoming everybody's business.
India has been a strategically important but quantitatively
insignificant player. The 15 launches offoreign satellites (from
2011 to date) earned the country about 40 million (Rs 321
crore), according to what Science and Technology Minister
Jitendra Singh told Parliament, reported by the Indian daily
Business StandaTd. Overall, Antrix is said to have registered Rs
1,300 crore in revenues in 2012-13. And that's just a sliver of
the massive opportunity that exists in providing such services.
This is the slice of space that Team Indus wants, and is sure
it can get. Mylswamy Annadurai, project director for Chan-
drayaan 1 & 2, who was among the few ISRO brass who talked
to Fortune India, doesn't share that optimism. "They are very
enthusiastic. But I don't know if they understand the real
intricacies of such a mission. Returns, which are important for
a private company, may not be immediate;' he says.
developed aerospace industry. It was also important to tap into
ex-ISRO employees, many of whom were based down south.
The move also gave Team Indus access to young talent; the
number of employees has grown to 30, from the initial dozen.
Save a handful of seniors such as Ramnath Babu, Dhruv Batra,
and Sheelika Ravishankar, the average age of the team is 23.
Aditya Kothandhapani, a t\ventysomething aerospace engi-
neering graduate from Britain's Cranfield University, tells me
that he declined other offers where he would have had to work
on aircraft structural design because they were too "stable and
boring". Others, like communications specialist Guruditya
Sinha and Nakul Kakar, gave up corporate and government
jobs, even paying lakhs to be released from employment bonds,
to join Team Indus. Kakar had worked at ISRO, but threw that
up when he learnt of Team Indus. "There, I would have been
working on a small part of a small subsystem. Here I am tak-
ing decisions on propulsion systems;' he says.
Guiding these youngsters is a group of12 senior ex-ISRO
scientists, including R.V. Perumal, former director, and P.S.
Nair, former director of the organisation's Satellite Centre.
Some of these senior pros offer their services to Team Indus
gratis. These services include regular review meetings, which
can be bruising affairs with the grey-haired ISRO scientists
TEAM INDUS ISN'T going into this with its collective heads and the young engineers differing on how to go about the
in the clouds; not entirely, at any rate. Narayan, who is an mission. I attended one such seven-hour review on structures,
alumnus of liT Delhi and the most vocal advocate of the proj - where Nair tore into the team for not sticking to certain speci-
ect, decided to leave his software company and work on the fications. It was almost like being back in school, except these
GLXP project full time. The team realised around then that it people aren't making paper rockets to chuck in the classroom.
made sense to move to Bangalore, which has a relatively well- After the meeting, Nair tells me: "''m not here to give them
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MOON MISSION
smiles and pats on the back. They still have a lot of work to
do for this to become real. In India we haven't done much
outside ISRO in terms of space. We have to push every op-
portunity possible." C.V. Reddy, another ex-ISRO engineer
who is helping Team Indus, agrees with Nair's assessment on
the massive amount of work that remains to be done.
Team Indus also has a solid team of advisors. These
include S.K. Jain, managing director at Westbridge Capi-
tal; Kiran Karnik, ex-president ofNasscom; Arun Seth,
chairman of Alcatel-Lucent India and former chairman of
British Telecom India; Rajiv Mody, chairman and manag-
ing director of Sasken Communication Technologies; and
ex-ISRO chairman K. Kasturirangan. They have been crucial
in helping Team Indus open doors at ISRO, the government,
and private companies.
Seth, who was attracted to the project's "audaciousness",
has been working closely with the team on spreading the
word. "You have to work on opening the right doors. That's
part of what I do for them. I can't claim that I understand the
technology challenges. What I have seen is that this is a group
of people who are passionate about it:'
Then, there's help from people like Mody who has given of-
fice space. "It is obviously not a run of the mill idea. We have
also connected them vvith our t eam in Finland for antenna
design. As and when they need us, we are there," says Mody.
Jain says he's spending "personal time and energy on this
because I know what this could mean as an inspiration".
Companies such as Tata Communications and L&T are
ready to work with Team Indus for free; for them, this is
potent ially a great marketing platform and an R&D initiative.
L&T has been associated with Team Indus for many months
now and signed a memorandum to undertake all the heavy
engineering work, including constructing the spacecraft. Tata
Communications, which has one of the largest undersea cable
networks in the world, is working with Team Indus to con-
nect mission control with ground stations. A memorandum is
in the works. These firms are willing to ignore short-term re-
turns: They have seen Virgin Galactic work its way up based
on a spaceship model that won the Ansari XPrize in 2004.
They see such ventures as a future source of business.
The bigger question, however, is what if this entire exercise
comes to nought? If Team Indus doesn't win? Narayan says
that while the actual landing will give them huge amounts
of credibility, the process of setting up the moon mission
itself will attract business. He says he's confident that there's
enough opportunity in space even for an untried company.
"We are trying to create an enterprise that is going to be
a billion dollars by 2020. We are developing end-to-end
aerospace project management capabilities, and that is
something we could offer as a service." He goes on to say
that even space agencies in developed countries would be
interest ed because of the lower costs.
0 \\R-\.T they've achieved, and to allow
us to,; oo: :heir moon lander in a suitably lunar
Jan - pe. Team Indus takes us a few kilometres
outh of the K.empegowda International Airport
and a 10-minute driYe off the e;.;.-pressway to the city, to a
hillock littered \\ith boulders. The area on top of the hill, which
was once part of a quarry, has an eerie quality-it could be a
strange planet in any sci-fi franchise. Except, there's Team
Indus's lunar launch vehicle on the surface.
Narayan and his team show us the finer points of the vehi-
cle, and pose beside it bashfully. Then, as we pack up to leave, a
Bangalore cop rides by on his motorcycle. He sees us and stops
to find out what's going on. One of the team members shows
him the lander and explains that, with any luck, this will be on
the moon in a few months. The cop looks befuddled, and looks
around at the group trying to place members. Then, inspired,
he asks: "Scientist-aa?" (Are you scientists?) In a city that
hosts several R&D labs, and is home to the Indian Institute of
Science, any strange behaviour can be attributed to scientists,
a group the cops are famili ar with. The team doesn't bother
explaining the finer points of Team Indus; they just nod and
the cop thunders away on his bike. All's well on his beat.
Team Indus isn't entirely as sanguine. After all, it is a small,
untried company that's t aking on far larger challengers. Na-
rayan says the competitors to watch out for are both from the
U.S.-Astrobotic and Moon Express. Astrobotic is incubated
at Carnegie Mellon and has partners like engineering simula-
tion company ANSYS. Moon Express, run by NRI billionaire
Naveen Jain, is headed by Andy Aldrin, son of Edwin 'Buzz'
Aldrin. Other contenders include Team Space IL from Israel,
which has got $16 million in funding. Then there's Spain's Bar-
celona Moon Team, which thus far has been the only team to
have secured a launch, on the Chinese Long March 2C rocket.
This is why Team Indus needs the PSLV; it will give them a
launch vehicle at a fraction of the cost other teams will have to
pay. ISRO is umvilling to comment. Its director, Deviprasad
Karnik, says officials are wary of talking to the media after the
Devas controversy. Team Indus not only needs to launch before
the GLXP deadline (end 2015), it has to time its moon entry
with the lunar day, which lasts for two weeks or so. The lander
is unlikely to survive the el\. treme cold of the lunar night, which
also lasts two weeks.
Those in Team Indus's corner are optimistic. "They are a
part of an India that people globally haven't seen much of;'
says V. Sunil, executive creative director at advertising agency
Wieden+ Kennedy, which is working on a new brand identity
for Team Indus. "The idea is to do something that will make a
larger point. Something that will say that beautiful science can
come out oflndia:' f5l
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