 "India's private lunar mission to carry students projects")
TeamIndus, which received a $1 million cheque from XPRIZE last year, is among the top three contenders in the competition. After completing the prototyping of its lunar lander and rover, the company says it has set itself a challenge of completing development over the next 15 months.
The firm, which had earlier said that it would use the Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) workhorse Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) to hurl its 600 kg payload into space, will begin looking for tentative launch slots in Q4 2017 along with the government space agency.
"We will hopefully be the first privately funded spacecraft to land on any extraterrestrial body. We are extremely proud because this entire design has been done indigenously. We've had a lot of consultants from international countries, we're also sourcing a lot of components internationally, but this is 100 per cent indigenously designed," said Rahul Narayan, co-founder at TeamIndus.
TeamIndus is in a race to beat Israeli team SpaceIL which has scheduled its launch for the second half of 2017. SpaceIL has secured its ticket to the moon aboard US-based private space firm SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. In order to win the $30 million XPRIZE competition, a team has to land on the moon's surface and travel a distance of 500 metres whilst transmitting high-resolution images.
As a way to build curiosity around its project and encourage youngsters in space exploration, TeamIndus has also announced its Lab2Moon project. The company is calling students aged between 14-25 to submit proposals for experiments that could end up hitching a ride in its spacecraft to the moon.
The theme of the project is to find ways of supporting sustainable human life on the moon. Participants will have to dream up ways of fitting all the required apparatus for their experiments into a coke can sized container weighing no more than 250 grams.
Registrations for the Lab2Moon competition will close on August 20 and a jury of renowned space experts including K. Kasturirangan, former Chairman of ISRO, will pick the top 20 ideas. The winning team will then get the chance to work with TeamIndus to make their modules ready for the harsh trip to moon and survive lunar conditions.