THE DASH TO THE MOON
IN THE BIGGEST PRIVATE SPACE RACE EVER, AN INDIAN START-UP VIES WITH FOUR INTERNATIONAL TEAMS FOR A $20 MILLION PRIZE TO LAND A ROVER ON THE MOON
Rahul Narayan sits perched on the edge of a simulated lunar landscape at the headquarters of TeamIndus on the outskirts of Bengaluru. Next to him is the prototype of the moon rover, a four-wheeled, all-aluminium robot that his team has built and which is in the process of undergoing final tests. If all goes well, the rover will be dropped on the moon’s surface by December 2017 and traverse
500 metres while sending back high-definition images and videos of earth’s closest celestial companion. If it succeeds, TeamIndus will create space history by becoming the first private enterprise in the world to not only build and land a spacecraft on the moon but have a rover ride the surface as well.
TeamIndus has named the rover ECA, an acronym for Ek Chhoti si Asha (a small hope). But the venture symbolises a giant leap forward in the quest for space exploration. Representing India, TeamIndus is one of the five teams across the world that have been shortlisted this January to compete in the greatest private space race ever—the Google Lunar X Prize. The other four teams that have qualified are Moon Express (US), SpaceIL (Israel), Hakuto (Japan) and Synergy Moon (an international consortium). The competition, sponsored by Google and kicked off in 2007, is designed to challenge engineers, entrepreneurs and innovators from around the world to develop low-cost methods of robotic space exploration by privately funded teams.
To win the prize, the teams must successfully place a vehicle on the moon, travel 500 metres across its surface and transmit images and videos back to earth. The teams must also prove that 90 per cent of their mission costs have been funded by private sources. The hotly contested preliminaries saw 32 teams register before they were narrowed down to 16 competitors and finally to five. The first team to successfully complete the mission wins the grand prize of $20 million (Rs 120 crore) while the runner-up team gets $5 million (Rs 30 crore).
The prize money may sound substantial. But in reality it will cover only a fourth of the costs for any of the winning teams. (TeamIndus estimates its moon shot would cost Rs 450 crore.) However, the honour and glory of winning the prize or even making it to the finals is equivalent to winning an Olympic medal. For, till recently, space exploration, given the enormous cost and the technological complexity involved, was confined to government agencies and institutions. While America’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had over the years engaged private enterprises to build its launchers and satellites as did the European Space Agency (ESA), it is only now that space technology is truly breaking free from the constraints and domination of government funding and control. The most daring example is that of billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk who set up Space X in 2002 and in a short span built durable spacecraft that competed with the best. Space X recently wowed the world by
“IT’S A BREATHTAKING IDEA. I LIKE IT WHEN INDIANS GO FOR BOLD, AUDACIOUS GOALS AS THEY’VE DONE” NANDAN NILEKANI, INFOSYS CO-FOUNDER “THESE GUYS SYMBOLISE THE SPIRIT OF INDIA AND HAVE GUTS AND DETERMINATION” KRISHNASWAMY KASTURIRANGAN FORMER ISRO CHAIRMAN
bringing back the giant first stage of its launcher and landing it vertically, making reusable rockets a viable cost-saving proposition. It successfully relaunched one of them last month.
That is why the current race to the moon has gained significance. It is another example of how space technology is being subjected to disruptive forces that are likely to usher in a whole new and exciting era for space exploration and exploitation. As Rahul Narayan of TeamIndus puts it, “We believe that tomorrow’s solutions will come when we break away from the dogmas of the past, collaborate by questioning what is, and combine enthusiasm with experience in new, inspiring ways.” Narayan likens TeamIndus’s effort to that of India trying to win its first cricket world cup in 1983. The Indian team is considered the underdog in the race because it was the last enterprise to register for the Lunar X prize in 2010, three years after it was announced. Besides being a late starter, TeamIndus is now competing with some of the best space technology research teams in the world.
It’s been a remarkable odyssey. Prior to setting up TeamIndus, Narayan’s exposure to space was his love for Star Trek, the only sci-fi serial he was able to watch on Doordarshan while growing up in Delhi in the 1980s. After graduating from IIT Delhi in 1995, Narayan set up a software company and ran it for years, but says modestly, “it was really nothing to write home about”. In 2010, at the age of 35, Narayan became impatient with routine and worried that time was running out for him to take on a challenging venture. It was then that he chanced upon an article on the Lunar X prize and wondered why no Indian team was competing in the race for the moon. He had been inspired by the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO)’s moon shot in 2008. ISRO had successfully launched Chandrayaan, its moon orbiter, and also had a Moon Impact Probe crash-land on the lunar surface—making it a historic first for India. ISRO became only the fifth space agency in the world to achieve such a feat.
Narayan talked with a few friends and they thought they could build the spacecraft in their garages over weekends. They rustled up the $50,000 (Rs 35 lakh) required and sent in their application on the last day. Narayan soon realised what a seemingly impossible mission they had embarked upon—not just in terms of technology but also building a team and fundraising for such a costly venture. Nevertheless, he began scouring Google for information about how to build such spacecraft and talked to experts. By 2012, he had built a core team and worked out the broad contours of the mission to the moon. “It was clear by then that this could no more be a hobby,” he says, “it would