Now you can have your name written on the moon for Rs 500!

business

Updated: Feb 06, 2016 14:46 IST

Sometime in 2017, a spacecraft will land on the moon. It will carry a small black cube, which will have your name written on it. All you need to do is pay Rs 500!

An ambitious group of engineers at Team Indus, the only Indian company to win the coveted Google Lunar X Prize, are offering to micro-etch your name on a small black cube for Rs 500, which will be placed on the surface of the moon. Bulk deals for entire families are also on offer.

The target date is September 2017.

Team Indus won the $1-million prize in January 2015 for developing a robot that can safely land on the surface of the moon, travel 500 metres over the lunar surface, and send Mooncasts

A name with less than 24 characters will be micro-etched on a 2 inch by 2 inch black cube, which, along with a rover ( a small tank-like robot) will be dropped on the moon by a capsule (spacecraft). Team Indus is developing the rover.

Team Indus is looking to micro-etch 1.4 million names on the tiny cube. At Rs 500 collected for every name, it would earn the company Rs 70 crore , a sort of crowdfunding initiative. Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising many small amounts of money from a large number of people.

But Rs 70 crore is still less than the total estimated project cost of $70-80 million (over Rs 400 crore).

Team Indus is in talks with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to carry the rover on a PSLV ( Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) sometime around September 2017. The deal is likely to be signed within two months.

Incidentally, ISRO has sent satellites to the moon and Mars, has never soft-landed before.

Former Infosys CEO Nandan Nilekani, Flipkart’s Sachin Bansal and automobile designer Dilip Chabria have reportedly started funding the project. L&T engineering is also contributing some part of the rover’s rugged structure.

A bigger version of the cube will also be made with all the names, said Rahul Narayan, co-founder and technology lead at Team Indus.