Shooting for the moon

A team of youngsters in Bengaluru is out to send a lunar mission in two years. The author meets
the enthusiastic men and women from Axiom Research
Devangshu Datta December 19, 2015 Last Updated at 00:30 IST

Team Indus member Suranjan Mallick with a prototype lunar lander

The atmosphere at the sparkling new Axiom Research Labs facility is informal
and collegial. This is not surprising, since most of Axiom's 80-strong workforce is
just out of college. It's also geeky. Equations, diagrams and Star Wars references
are scribbled across the many whiteboards scattered around the open-plan
office, a stone's throw from the Bengaluru-Hyderabad highway. That's to be
expected since almost everyone on campus has a science/engineering
background. It's driven: people walk quickly, conversations are brief and pointed.
But there's also a sense of collective excitement and plain old-fashioned fun.
People seem to enjoy themselves. The young men and women here all opted out
of safe jobs and decided to shoot for the moon instead - literally.
This makes Axiom a rarity in the aerospace business. Its flagship is Team Indus.

Some time before December 31, 2017, Team Indus aims to land a vehicle on the
moon. A rover will roll out from the lander and travel at least 500 metres "along
an interesting path in a deliberate manner" across the moon's surface. That
rover will then establish a data link with Earth and transmit two HDTV video
broadcasts of at least eight minutes each, covering the moon landing and
movement. The mission must also receive and retransmit other data to Earth and
perform a few other tasks.
That lander and rover must be designed by Team Indus. No more than 10 per
cent of the necessary financing for the moon mission can come from government
sources. If Team Indus pulls this off, it will fulfil the terms of the Google Lunar
XPrize, or GLX, and it would be eligible to win a share of $30 million.
Team Indus is the only Indian outfit out of 20-odd competitors. It has already won
a milestone award of $1 million for its lunar lander design. If Team Indus does
become the first team to fulfil all mission requirements, it could win $20 million.
If it's the second team, it could win $5 million.
Nobody has ever put together a privately funded lunar lander and rover and sent
it to the moon. The prize has been hanging fire now since 2007 with the deadline
being extended multiple times. But nobody on the Axiom campus - not even the
guards from the security agency - seems to have the slightest doubt that Team
Indus can do this.
That certainty filters down right from the top. The company has the chutzpah to
declare that its "selenographic address" ("which will be functional sometime after
2015") is Lunar Zone: Sinus Medii (0.50N Selenographic latitude, 1.50W
Selenographic longitude). For non-geeks, it means that the landing site has
already been chosen. Indeed, the facility includes a mockup of the landing spot
where the local terrain has been recreated, complete with "lunar dust", to test
the rover's performance.
It started as a madcap project back in 2010. Rahul Narayan, a 40-something
entrepreneur and Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi graduate wondered if the
terms of GLX could be met. He talked to many of his pals who had similar
backgrounds. Every one of them was captivated by the dream of going to the
moon. They persuaded GLX to accept a late entry and put together a company.
In 2011, Narayan says, they crossed an inflection point and realised the dream
could become reality. Team Indus made a presentation to K Kasturirangan, the
retired chief of the Indian Space Research Organisation, or ISRO. He approved of
some of the concepts in that presentation, and disagreed with others. But he
thought it was possible and he promised to put in a word where it counted. In
fact, Kasturirangan was pretty enthusiastic and said that Team Indus embodied
"the spirit of modern India and a flavour of its future". A little later, Team Indus
met APJ Abdul Kalam who was also extremely encouraging. Various doors started
opening at that point.

The first tranches of cash were raised by the founders coming up with some
money from their personal accounts. The first employees recruited themselves.
Some college students landed up, asking to be allowed to intern with the
company that was then situated in Noida. They told their friends and juniors, and
a pipeline was created.
Dhruv Batra is one of the old-buddy network Narayan tapped. He manages
project delivery. He made alternative arrangements to run his Delhi-centric
business and moved to Bengaluru when Team Indus shifted out of Noida.
Ramnath Babu, who now heads the structures team for Team Indus, was based in
Mumbai from where he was running his business. He moved, first to Noida and
then to Bengaluru, cajoling his brother to take over his business so that he could
get involved in the mission.
Babu and Batra say that absolutely everybody has stretched selflessly to help
Team Indus. Equipment that they thought would take six months to fabricate was
delivered in 100 days. Teams at the Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad, and
at the National Aerospace Lab, Bengaluru, worked overtime to test equipment for
Team Indus.
Sheelika Ravishankar, who handles HR and other soft functions, says she
originally pitched in part-time just to help set things up. Part-time turned into fulltime and she jokes that despite being the only person in Team Indus without a
science/tech background, she has ended up interviewing people for the most
arcane engineering functions. Ravishankar says there's been a steady stream of
boys (and a few girls) wanting to first intern and then work when they graduate.
Most of the younger members of Team Indus went to topnotch engineering
colleges. They could have gone on to do much safer (and boring) things.
Instead, these 24-year-olds spend weekends working because they really like
what they're doing. Vishesh Vatsal practically dances with delight as he draws a
squiggly flight path to explain how the landing will take place. Suranjan Mallick
turns into a muffled voice under the mock-up of the lander as he explains how
the paired rockets will be vectored to ensure changes in flight directions.
Guruditya Sinha waves his arms in three directions as he shows how the
telemetry and telecommand system will work.
There is pride alongside the passion. Everybody is well aware that Team Indus
represents India. They know that winning the GLX would be seen as another big
achievement for India in space. That passion and pride may be infectious but it
also needs direction. This is where the third management layer comes in. In
demographic terms, Team Indus is unusual. There are the 25-year-olds who form
the bulk of the project team. There are a few people in their 40s - the founders.
Up above everyone, in terms of age and experience, there is the panel of
technical advisers. All of them are retired ISRO personnel. PS Nair and NC Bhat
worked on the Aryabhatta Project, which launched India's first satellite way back

in 1975. RV Perumal, P Natarajan and RK Sharma are the other veterans with
wide ranging expertise.
Incidentally, the internal designations draw on the Star Wars universe. The
founders are Jedi Masters. The tech advisers are Jedi Commanders. There are
also Troopers and Skywalkers and presumably, padawans. The unusual dynamic
works brilliantly. The ISRO veterans quickly rule out approaches that are unlikely
to work. They understand processes and they know how to test equipment, for
instance. They are completely familiar with the Indian space ecosystem.
At the same time, the veterans seem to enjoy the fresh approach of the
youngsters they interact with. For their part, the youngsters (and the founders)
are all praise for the "sirs" and their ability to find rapid solutions as well as do
the meticulous work of testing everything.
ISRO encouraged the creation of a space-industrial complex because it tendered
out to private vendors. Although Team Indus cannot take government financing,
it is relying heavily on that ecosystem to fabricate its designs and to test.

A prototype of Team Induss lunar rover

Team Indus has hired testing facilities at the Space Applications Centre and
National Aerospace Laboratories. The lander will launch on ISRO's trusty PSLV

(Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle). Again, this is where the technical advisors have
come in handy - they know everybody and have ensured complete compatibility.
Everything will be designed by Team Indus and components sourced from
everywhere will finally be put together at the Axiom facility. There are three
formal partners: L&T's heavy engineering division is helping put the lander and
rover together, while Sasken Communications and Tata Communications are
aiding with the communications and control systems.
There are multiple vendors: at least 120 from all over the world. The lander's
engines and rockets, for instance, may come from Japan. The solar panels may
be sourced from America and the battery could be British. The lander, which will
have the rover stored inside it, will be fitted on top of a PSLV rocket that will
launch the lander into earth-orbit. The lander will then use its own engine to
match orbits with the moon. It could take nine swings or even more to
rendezvous. Once that is done, it will use its eight auxiliary rockets to make
course corrections and land at the designated spot.
After the lander is securely down, a panel will open and the rover will roll out.
The rover will then start moving around (very slowly) and recording video. The
lander will relay that video to Earth. Everything will be monitored from the earth
stations.
The engineering problems are formidable. The entire landing sequence has to be
pre-programmed and autonomous. There is a lag of almost four seconds when
relaying signals to the moon and back. Unlike Chandrayaan, the lander must
remain in working condition because it has to relay signals. Redundancy must be
built in because component failure could otherwise jeopardise the whole mission.
The equipment within the lander must be protected, not only from the physical
shocks of takeoff and landing but also from the heat generated by its rockets. On
the moon, internal temperatures must be controlled, though the external
temperature will vary a lot. Before getting to the moon, the lander will pass
through the Van Allen radiation belt. All the delicate electronic equipment must
be radiation-hardened to keep it from getting fried. There will be periods of
eclipse, when solar panels will be ineffective. The solar panels must open
correctly and be properly oriented.
Narayan guesses it could take over $30 million for the mission. Axiom has raised
money several times. It started with the founders pitching in. There was a
funding round in March 2015 with investors like Nandan Nilekani and Ajai
Chowdhry coming in. Another round of funding is currently in progress. There is
talk of a possible round of crowd-sourced corporate funding.
There are two other concurrent projects, which should eventually pay their way.
One is satellite bus development, which involves figuring out spacecraft designs
that can effectively launch multiple satellites. The other is the development of
high altitude long endurance drones.

Eventually, Axiom might become a profitable aerospace company that earns its
bread and butter from drones and satellite buses. But GLX will be a hard act to
beat - in the public imagination at least.