Bengaluru: If all goes well for this Bengaluru based startup, it will reach the Moon in 2017, quite literally. Featured in unique startup category at the Invest Karnataka event, Rahul Narayan, CEO of Team Indus, the only Indian team to win Google Lunar X prize said his team is set to land a robot on the Moon by 2017.
Founded five years ago with a mission—let’s land on the moon—Team Indus has since then grown from five to 75 members. The team, a bunch of engineers, air force pilots, bankers and aerospace engineers, has also roped in a dozen retired Indian Institute of Science professors as their mentors, who Narayan says, are "very excited to look at the nuts and bolts of the problems we solve."
Last year, Team Indus won a $1 million prize for meeting significant milestones in developing a robot that can safely land on the surface of the Moon, travel 500 metres over the lunar surface, and send Mooncasts.
Talking about the team’s journey from the time they launched in 2012, Narayan said the initial two years were spent in designing and building the concept and hardware. It was in 2014 that their efforts materialized when Team Indus was selected in the top three from the 33 international teams competing for the Google Lunar X prize.
Narayan identifies year 2015 and 2016 as the years of creating a prototype spacecraft. Talking about the spacecraft to be launched in 2017, he said, “It is a full length spacecraft, about 1.8 metres long, 6 feet high, with multiple sensors mounted in it, a dozen cameras on board and solar panels to generate energy as it goes along.”
“It is designed in Domlur, integrated in Domlur and hence made in Domlur,” he said. The components for the spacecraft have been imported from various countries. Team Indus has 25 global partners in Japan, Germany, Spain, UK, US.
