Team Indus and the Lunar X PrizeTeam Indus has made reasonable progress so far. The mission concept was formulated in 2012 and systems design started a year later. A major motivational boost came from winning one of the milestone prizes worth $1 million for landing technology in January 2015. All going well, the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) will launch Team Indus into space through a dedicated polar satellite launch vehicle in September 2017. Team Indus has serious global competition of course, but is currently rated among the top three firms in the race for the prize.
As Rahul Narayan, chief executive, and Vivek Raghavan, adviser, explained it to me, the Team Indus spacecraft’s lunar descent will start at 12.6km above the surface of the moon, with the spacecraft travelling at 1.69km/s (Mach 5+). The landing zone is selected 700km downstream from the descent point and the entire descent will take about 900 seconds. The descent needs to be completely autonomous, since the time needed to tele-command the spacecraft from earth is too long.Since the moon has no atmosphere, the engines need to be fired to reduce the velocity to land on the moon. The spacecraft has one main engine delivering 460 newton (N) of thrust and 16 thrusters of 22N that are used to kill the velocity and control the spacecraft. The descent is guided by a number of sensors including a laser altimeter, two lunar descent cameras and four laser range finders. The firing of the engines is computed using the inputs from sensors to follow a fuel optimal trajectory to achieve touchdown.There are five phases during descent. The navigation and guidance strategies are different for each phase of descent. The spacecraft mass at the beginning of descent is 400kg and it burns 200kg of fuel during descent. The spacecraft speeds need to be less than 1m/s in both the vertical and lateral direction at touchdown.
There's also the question of whether ISRO can provide accounting information to satisfy GLXP that Team Indus really is paying the full cost of the flight. There's been controversy in the past about whether costs quoted by India for their launchers really include all costs.
Fr space agency CNES & Axiom Research Labs India sign LoI: 3DPlus France to provide Team Indus lunar rover cameras
Imagine, design and build a project that would catalyse the evolution of mankind as a sustainable multi-planetary species. We believe that for mankind to evolve into a multi-planetary species, sustainable living is key.That means your team of upto three people have to conceive your project from the point of view of sustainability. It could range from investigating how seeds grow in space through to examining new possibilities in renewable energy. The project should fit the dimensions of a soda can, and weigh under 250 grams. It should also be able to connect with the on-board computer.Register before the 20th of August, 2016, write a short concept note, upload project drawings and share a video on why your project should fly to the moon. Shortlisted entries will be asked to build a prototype and invited to showcase it to an international jury at the TeamIndus HQ in Bangalore, India, early next year. The winning project will get to ride to the moon!
France-India space cooperation CNES joins Indian Team Indus mission French technology to fly to the Moon in 2017At the Toulouse Space Show, where India is guest of honour, CNES signed an agreement with Indian firm Axiom Research Labs to contribute to the Team Indus mission that is set to land a module and rover on the Moon in 2017. France will supply latest-generation CMOS micro-cameras developed in partnership with French firm 3DPlus.Tuesday 28 June at the Toulouse Space Show, where India is guest of honour, CNES President Jean-Yves Le Gall and Rahul Narayan, Director of Axiom Research Labs, signed a letter of intent to fly leading-edge French technology on an Indian lunar rover for the first private mission to the Moon. CNES is thus teaming up with Axiom Research Labs to conduct a lunar landing in 2017 and CASPEX (Colour cmos cAmera for SPace EXploration) micro-cameras will equip sensors designed to aid the rover’s progress by detecting ground obstacles in the path of its wheels.This partnership plays into CNES’s strategy of developing closer ties with the new generation of players from the NewSpace sphere, in which India is a prime mover. In so doing, CNES is demonstrating its ability to innovate and adapt. India’s historic partnership with CNES dates back to 1964, when it signed its first space cooperation agreement with France.The CASPEX micro-camera is built around complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology using integration methods patented by 3DPlus that reduce the size of an optical imaging instrument by a factor of ten. CASPEX is reprogrammable and radiation-tolerant, making it suited to a range of space missions. Produced by 3DPlus, a firm located in Buc, France, it will be making its first flight for this mission. Team Indus is led by Bangalore-based start-up Axiom Research Labs, the figurehead of the NewSpace movement in India. Team Indus is competing in the Google Lunar X Prize.On the occasion of this signature, Jean-Yves Le Gall commented: “CNES must look for excellence where it is to be found, for today’s space technology will drive tomorrow’s technology revolutions and growth. In joining forces with Team Indus on this mission to land a rover on the Moon in 18 months’ time, CNES is showing that innovation in France has a key role to play in NewSpace. These new players are doing things differently and working to short schedules by deploying innovative methods. The average age of our new partners is 30, so we will learn as much from them as they will from us.”
BENGALURU: For the first time ever, a private space venture in India has been contracted to carry a payload to the moon for a global space agency. The venture, Bengaluru-based Team Indus, among the frontrunners in the Google XPrize competition to put a privately funded craft on the moon by December 2017, will carry a new line of state-of-the-art cameras for France's national space agency CNES.
There will be no exchange of money in this contract. CNES, which has for long worked with ISRO, gets to test its new cameras and partner with a venture that's developing innovative technologies expected to bring down space mission costs and reduce launch timelines. Team Indus gets cameras that it needs for the mission - they will aid the rover's progress on the moon by detecting ground obstacles in the path of its wheels - and for which it would otherwise have had to pay over $500,000.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/French-space-agency-ropes-in-Indias-Team-Indus-to-carry-payload-to-moon/articleshow/53053505.cms?QuoteBENGALURU: For the first time ever, a private space venture in India has been contracted to carry a payload to the moon for a global space agency. The venture, Bengaluru-based Team Indus, among the frontrunners in the Google XPrize competition to put a privately funded craft on the moon by December 2017, will carry a new line of state-of-the-art cameras for France's national space agency CNES.QuoteThere will be no exchange of money in this contract. CNES, which has for long worked with ISRO, gets to test its new cameras and partner with a venture that's developing innovative technologies expected to bring down space mission costs and reduce launch timelines. Team Indus gets cameras that it needs for the mission - they will aid the rover's progress on the moon by detecting ground obstacles in the path of its wheels - and for which it would otherwise have had to pay over $500,000.
The propulsion systems that will be used on their spacecraft next year is of a kind that has never been used before for a mission of this sort. Team Indus engineers realised that the usual route to landing a spacecraft on the moon, using engines of variable thrust, was closed to them as countries closely guard their propulsion technology.
No off-the-shelf variable-thrust satellite engines were available to them. There was no time to develop new engines anyway, even if the company managed to put together the expertise to develop them. So the Indian team took a decision: use a combination of small fixed thrust engines and produce the same effect using control algorithms. "We are trying to accomplish in software what we cannot do in hardware," says M Jayaraman, a former ISRO propulsion expect who is now advising Team Indus.
By being in Bengaluru, Team Indus hopes to launch with ISRO, but no contract has been signed yet. In any case, the Team Indus satellite has been designed keeping in mind the capabilities of ISRO's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). At a launch weight of 600 kilograms, it is well within the weight restrictions of this versatile rocket.
The algorithms are critical as they are used for controlling the main engine and the 16 engines that are used for maneuvering by the satellite. Team Indus will use 16 fixed thrust engines in various combinations to achieve variable thrust during descent to the moon. "It is one step beyond Chandrayan-1," says Srinivas Hegde, who is heading the mission control for Team Indus.
He adds that IDXA is in the midst of getting funding for the launch of the Independence X rover – a lunar drone spacecraft running on the team’s own Independence-4 engine – in August 2017 by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle.If all goes well, it will be the first Malaysian spacecraft to be launched through ISRO. As Izmir explains, “[we] developed the technology here [in Malaysia]”.Almost every component of the craft is built by the team, except for the communication systems. Even the test chambers are built by IDXA.“We need €23 million (RM106.6 million) for the project,” says Izmir, “€20 million (RM92.7 million) for the launch, and €3 million (RM13.9 million) for logistics and cost of the spacecraft.”He adds if successful, it will be the cheapest launch programme to the Moon ever. “The cheapest right now is India’s Moon mission Chandrayaan 1 which cost €80 million (RM370.85 million).”
Speaking to TOI on Friday , Isro chairman A S Kiran Kumar said that India's first private lunar mission by Team Indus will be launched by Isro's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). “The launch will be from Sriharikota,“ he said.Asked if Isro and Team Indus have firmed up the agreement related to the launch he replied “yes.“
Current plans envisage the Team Indus mission being provisionally launched on September 21, 2017, and reaching the moon about a fortnight later
The startup has developed a Lunar rover named Indie, which is set to take flight on an unmanned spacecraft, also in the prototyping stage at Team Indus’ facility in Bengaluru. “She (Indie) is going to be heading to the moon in 2017. Team Indus is close to 85 engineers and over two dozen retired ISRO scientists. The engineering team is actually very young, we’ve got an average age of around 25 years and having the scientists from ISRO, these guys have built India’s mission, so it makes a lot of sense with them guiding us towards our ultimate goal,” says an enthusiastic Justin Alva, a member of Team Indus’ outreach team.
The rover Indie is a four-wheel drive which can be controlled remotely from Earth. Each wheel is designed in aluminium to sustain the unpredictable and rough terrain on the surface of the Moon. Alva tells us, “each wheel is independently driven, and she’s got these amazing cameras that help her plan routes. The lunar surface is dusty and it's really abrasive, that’s why we have aluminium wheels that will ensure that navigation is not a problem. She can take on craters, she can take on rocks.”
At 10Kgs Indie will be capable of transmitting high definition images from the Moon, back to Earth. It will take approximately 4 seconds for Indie to execute a command given from Earth. Once the unmanned spacecraft lands on the Moon, Indie will use Team Indus’ proprietary pan tilt mechanism to connect back to Earth and beam back high definition lunar images.
It would be very, very remarkable if this private effort manages to get to the lunar surface before Chandrayaan-2, and a bit of an awkward moment for ISRO if that happens. Best of luck to Indie and Team Indus !
It wouldn't matter as the purpose of both the projects are different.The former's objective is simply to land and run a rover upto 500 meters,the later's is not just to land but to carry out various scientific studies.
"We have signed a launch services agreement with Team Indus which essentially provides a PSLV launch for launching a lunar orbiter and lander sometime in the fourth quarter of 2017," Rakesh Sasibhushan, Chairman and Managing Director of Antrix Corporation - the commercial arm of ISRO, Bengaluru - told NDTV.