Indian start-up wants to script space history
Axiom Research lab’s plan, by its ‘Team Indus’, to land on moon, is definitely going to write a new history for India. It will be purely a novel venture, as it would be taken up for the first time by an Indian start-up in its own capacity. If successful, the mission will earn India a coveted fourth rank among the comity of nations like the US, Russia and China, which have already conducted similar missions. It must be brought to the notice of the people that ‘Team Indus’ is composed of retired scientists, mainly hailing from the reputed Indian Space Research Organisation, based in Bangalore. Surprisingly, none of the scientists involved in this grand project is a space scientist. In fact, the entire historic mission is none other than the part of a competition launched by the information technology giant, Google, called ‘lunar XPrize challenge’. It is all about a contest which has the objective to challenge global engineers and innovators to develop low-cost methods of robotic space exploration.
Interestingly, the contest has a high value price tag, attached to it — the winner of the first prize will receive $20 million, and the second rank holder, an amount of five million dollars and incentive bonuses of another five million dollars. It must be noted that the amount of five million dollars incentive was offered to the developers for achievements which include surviving a lunar night (14 earth days), and visiting an Apollo landing site in the moon during the whole course of the journey. This shows how private entrepreneurs are fast becoming an active part of the space missions, which were once used to be the priorities of nation-states or precisely the single domains of advanced nations of the world. With globalisation, the role of multi-national corporations and their allies are coming to the centre of the trade, science, technology, politics, culture and even to the making of our daily food menu. The global community must acknowledge and give due recognition to such initiatives, which are increasingly becoming the norm in many sectors of research and development around the world, particularly in developed nations. Google’s effort to boost private missions to space must be appreciated. Such missions will attract many more private players into action.
For a country like India, which has a long-standing record of having sharp scientific minds, in the field of science and technology, this mission by Team Indus will be a feather in the country’s cap. As the mission needs around $60 million towards the cost, around $15 million have been raised through private equity so far. Sources say that Ratan Tata, Nandan Nilekani and Bansal brothers of Flipkart are among the top investors in the project. But the challenge for the winner is that it has to successfully place a spacecraft on the moon’s surface, travel at least 500 metres and transmit high definition videos and images back to earth. Undoubtedly, it is a hugely challenging big task.