Perhaps their priority is less about winning the prize, and more about catching the attention of the country and its govt. An Indian 'private' effort at moon landing?? Did I miss something?
Quote from: vineethgk on 01/10/2017 06:34 amPerhaps their priority is less about winning the prize, and more about catching the attention of the country and its govt. An Indian 'private' effort at moon landing?? Did I miss something? As it became clear Rutan was likely to win the original X Prize, some of the other competitors said similar things -- winning the prize wasn't the most important thing, and they were more focused on commercial success or some other goal, whether they won the prize or not. And then none of them ever flew anything.Live by the prize, die by the prize.
A Bengaluru start-up says donors to its moon lander project will be immortalised.Indians are being offered the opportunity to leave their name on the moon, for a price. Space start-up TeamIndus will get the names of public ‘donors’ micro-engraved on a small-sized aluminium object, which will be placed on the lunar surface when its lander descends on the moon. The bill: ₹500 per name.
Beer Brewing Experiment by yeast research Team shortlisted by Team Indus as one of the potential payloadhttp://www.space.com/35431-moon-beer-brewing-experiment-team-indus.html
Quote from: chota on 01/24/2017 12:11 pmBeer Brewing Experiment by yeast research Team shortlisted by Team Indus as one of the potential payloadhttp://www.space.com/35431-moon-beer-brewing-experiment-team-indus.htmlThis is a critical experiment, if you can't brew beer on moon, colonisation is doomed. They need follow up with growing hops and barley in lunar soil.
Team Indus, the private initiative to land a rover on the Moon, received 3,000 entries from 15 countries including the US, the UK, Peru, Italy and India for its Lab2Moon competition, announced in July last year, to select experiments to be carried as payloads on its rover.From those entries, 15 have been shortlisted, including an inflatable dome that could help humans live on the Moon, an experiment to see how hardy microorganisms adapt to conditions on the Moon, and even a project that seeks to produce oxygen on the Moon. The projects are mostly by youngsters, many of them college students.
On Wednesday , a jury consisting of former ISRO chairman K Kasturirangan, French space agency CNES's former chairman Alain Bensoussan, and professor of astrophysics at Yale University Priyamvada Natarajan will select a maximum of eight winners from the shortlisted 15.
Bengaluru-based The Lunar Leap is looking to send Tardigrades, micro-animals considered capable of withstanding some of the most severe environmental conditions, to the Moon and study their survival behaviour. "This will help us learn more about their DNA structure, learn what makes them so tough, and even culture those strands in human cells," said Keertivardhan M Joshi, one of the three team members, all employees of the National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) but participating in their personal capacities.
"Teams Callisto, Ears and Kalpana from India, Space4Life from Italy, Lunadome from Britain, Killa Lab from Peru and Regolith Revolution from the U.S. have qualified to fly their experiments to the lunar surface in our spacecraft," said a TeamIndus statement.
Inside, across a large hall, a team of over 100 professionals, mostly youngsters in the average age group of 25 years, are buckling down to accomplish what is being touted as a historic project—the world's first privately-funded mission to not only build and 'soft-land' a spacecraft on the moon,
Although missions to the moon have been conducted by five countries so far—the erstwhile Soviet Union, the US, Japan, China and India—apart from the European Space Agency, only three nations (the US, Russia and China) have successfully accomplished a soft landing on the moon, as against a ‘crash landing'. If Team Indus succeeds in its mission, India will be the fourth country on that list.
If all goes as per plan, Team Indus will hoist the Tricolour on the moon's surface on January 26—India's Republic Day—next year after undertaking a journey of 21 days in space. It will also be able to fulfill the terms of the Google Lunar XPrize (GLXP), thereby becoming eligible to win a total of $30 million in prize money.
The start-up has already won a ‘Milestone Prize' of $1 million for its ‘lunar lander' design in 2015. If Team Indus, indeed, becomes the first team to fulfill all the mission requirements, it could win $20 million as the grand prize.
If it's the runner-up, it would still win $5 million. Only five teams, including Team Indus, remain in the running now. The others are SpaceIL (Israel), Moon Express (the US), Synergy Moon (an international team made up of members from over 15 different nations) and Hakuto (Japan). The deadline for completing the project is December 31 this year.
Over the next few months, members of Team Indus, the Bengaluru-based startup that will send a privately funded spacecraft to the moon this year, will tour the country and visit over 36,000 schools to raise awareness about their mission.
The ‘Moonshot Wheels’ campaign, will consist of a mobile vehicle that will tour the country to educate children about astronomy and space.
According to the team, the company has almost finished building its 600-kg-plus moon lander.
The team also put forward an offer. By paying ₹500, you can have your name micro-engraved on an aluminium plate, which will be placed on the moon.
Team Indus, a Bengaluru start-up aspiring to be the first Indian private space company, signed a contract with ISRO’s commercial arm Antrix Corporation for a launch but is now awaiting clearance for the launch ahead of a December 31 deadline.
Team Indus and a Japanese team, Hakuto, are contracted to fly on ISRO’s PSLV XL rocket on December 28, 2017, three days before the closure of the deadline for the Google X Prize contest. The two teams will share the nearly $30 million commercial cost for the launch.
“The necessary approvals for launch of the Team Indus moon mission has not yet concluded. An MoU was signed last year by Antrix Corporation and Team Indus. The launch service has to be authorised by the government and the approval process is going on,” Antrix chairman and managing director Rakesh Sasibhushan said. Sources in ISRO said the MoU is under scrutiny and various questions are being asked about the nature of the launch, the Google Lunar X Prize competition and intellectual property issues involved.
The mission is expected to cost Team Indus in the range of $ 70 million to build its moon rover and spacecraft from scratch and to launch it to the moon.
Bengaluru: Team Indus, the private initiative to land a rover on the Moon, is looking to raise $40 million through a mix of corporate sponsorship and crowdfunding before its scheduled lunar rover mission launch in December.
"Our spacecraft structure is ready. The software and the mission command centre is up and running and is undergoing testing. This mission is challenging. ISRO's Chandrayaan 1 was an orbital mission, while our spacecraft has to land on the Moon," said Narayan. He, however, noted that the company could take some liberties because the mission is a short, landing-focussed one. The flight testing of the spacecraft and payloads will happen next month at ISRO's facility.