Bengaluru-based Team Indus, made of a group of young space enthusiasts, is practising a kind of frugal engineering with generous help from former ISRO engineersV Adimurthy came to the Team Indus office in Bengaluru for the first time in 2013. As the resident intellectual of the Indian Space Organisation (ISRO), the 70-year-old theoretical physicist had been instrumental in working out the mathematical aspects of its missions for four decades. It was mainly his calculations that formed the basis for the moon and mars missions, and he still provides important intellectual inputs for ISRO missions.In 2013, Team Indus was a group of young space enthusiasts who had been working for three years to develop a spacecraft to land and rove on the moon, as part of the Google X Prize Lunar Challenge. They had no experience in space technology . But they had a plan, and they wanted Adimurthy to take a look.After a review, Adimurthy was not sure the mission would work the way Team Indus had planned. He was especially concerned with the propulsion systems, which were similar to what ISRO had used for their moon and mars missions.The engines were good for ISRO satellites, but too heavy for the tiny satellite of Team Indus. The company had a tough job on their hands, as they had to do something ISRO had never tried: land a spacecraft on the moon. But their concepts were on shaky ground. Adimurthy felt that the satellite would never reach the moon with the Team Indus design.Team Indus engineers, whose company is named Axiom Research Labs, understood his point and abandoned their initial designs quickly. When Adimurthy came to Bengaluru a year later for a second review, he found they had worked out a new method of propulsion. “In the second review I felt that everything was in order at least in the calculations,” he says, “Now it was a matter of execution.”He came to Bengaluru for a third review four months ago, and found things progressing well. The propulsion systems had been sized for the mission correctly. Their commercial sources were well chosen.The intended spacecraft trajectories looked good too. But deadline was only a year and a half away, and Team Indus engineers needed to start integrated testing quickly.After Adimurthy’s suggestion, Team Indus took some daring decisions, with generous help from other retired engineers from ISRO.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.In the last two years, a set of 20 ISRO engineers has been guiding Team Indus on the craft of frugal engineering, teaching them to generate maximum benefits with the minimum of time and investments. This approach sometimes required cutting corners, sometimes genuine creativity.As the 80-odd engineers work on their task, they are also creating a startup of a kind never seen in India : an aerospace company that has the capability to design satellites with minimum costs and tight deadlines. “Even if we get the prize,” says Axiom Labs CEO Rahul Narayan, “we would not get as much money as we have spent.”"The company does not want to disclose the money it has raised so far, but it will need to raise $60 million for the project to be complete. At $20 million, the prize money for getting first is well below what is required to achieve it. The startup has begun parallel projects that will build a business after the challenge, when it ends by December next year."The Google X Prize had extended the deadline for the challenge repeatedly as teams found it hard going. As it stands now, the deadline is December 31, 2017, with one condition: at least one team which competes must have a launch contract by the end of December 2016. At the moment only one team, SpaceIL from Israel, has a launch contract with an established launch company. SpaceIL signed a contract with Space X to launch using the Falcon 9 rocket.Moon Express, based in the US, has got a contract from the startup Rocket Labs, but this New Zealand firm is yet to launch its first rocket. 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.Team Indus, however, will require a dedicated launch because of the mission requirements. Any spacecraft that is headed into space from the earth will first go to an elliptical Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO), from where it is nudged by its own rockets to a path and velocity that will take it out of the clutches of the earth. It will reach the moon after travelling about 3.8 lakh kilometers. The entire journey from lift-off to a moon orbit will take about five days.Team Indus will not have to worry about the GTO, as precise injection to the earth orbit is left to the launch vehicle. From then onwards, the spacecraft has to be steered using onboard rockets.The journey to the moon has several other challenges, one of which is to maintain the right temperatures on the spacecraft, which faces the sun for energy but is also surrounded by space that extremely cold in shade. The spacecraft has to slow down while approaching the moon, and then descend slowly to a spot that is as level as possible.All of this has to be done autonomously, as descent to the moon’s surface cannot be controlled from the earth in real time. “Landing on the moon is new to even ISRO engineers,” says RV Perumal, former ISRO engineer and now an advisor to Team Indus.As the former project director of the Geostationary Launch Vehicle (GSLV), Perumal knows a few things about aerospace engineering. Adimurthy goes to the Team Indus office only occasionally, but Perumal — who lives in Chennai — is a more regular visitor, overseeing the engineers as often as once a week.Axiom Research has other distinguished former ISRO employees, some of whom are now full-time employees. Mahendra Nayak, who was in charge of onboard software for INSAT satellites; PS Nair, group director of structures in ISRO satellite centre; Srinivas Hegde, mission director of Chandrayan-1; and P Natarajan, who headed the control dynamics and simulation group at the ISRO satellite centre.Natarajan, for example, oversees the crucial controls group in Team Indus. Among other things, this group develops the algorithms that will control the descent on to the moon surface.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.If successful, the propulsion systems of Team Indus will be another example of frugal engineering. The spacecraft, when finally built, will have several such examples of optimisation that will reduce the weight of the spacecraft and save time and money.The satellite now will have to be built in quick time, as the launch time — no matter who gets the launch contract — has to be before December next year. Working backwards, the satellite has to go to testing within a year, for which Team Indus has to start cutting metal almost immediately. ISRO built the Chandrayan-1 spacecraft in 18 months, a record compared with other space agencies around the world . Team Indus has to do it faster, but the spacecraft is not as big as what was used for the ISRO moon mission.Axiom Research Labs will grow to a strength of 120 employees by the end of the year. Its management has started thinking about life after the launch as well. One plan is to become a service provider building satellites. Another one is to make some products of its own, with drones being a serious candidate at the moment.Most of the investors have not considered a return of their investment from this project. “It is an emotional investment,” says angel investor Sharad Sharma, who was one of the early investors in the project. Team Indus still have to raise more money, but it is supposedly well on its way to doing it. The country seems to have a set of willing investors. It has volunteer experts willing to spend time with the young engineers as well.Vivek Raghavan, a small early investor, was not a believer in Team Indus in the beginning. “How is it realistic to do something like this with no background,” he asked himself about two and a half years ago. Raghavan, a computer science PhD from Carnegien Mellon University, was the chief product manager and biometric architect of the Aadhar project. He went through the tech documents and found the documentation sophisticated. He decided to wait and watch.Team Indus kept meeting its goals. He introduced them to other investors and started working with the team as an advisor. Raghavan joined them full time in February this year. “Much of the heavy lifting is done by engineers who do not know failure,” he says. “They also have expert help.”The spacecraft has to be injected in a precise Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO). Since a launch company will do this, there is little for Team Indus to do.After the launch vehicle ejects the moon rover, its velocity has to raised to prepare for departure from an earth orbit. This manoeuvre requires precision, and it is left to Team Indus engineers.Takeoff for the moon from the earth orbit, by firing satellite rockets. The timing is very important, to avoid going somewhere else.The spacecraft has to slow down as it approaches the moon for it to be captured in a lunar orbit. Again requires precision in the firing of rockets.This is the hardest part, as it requires varying the thrust, slowing down and landing softly on a spot that has been chosen before. India has no experience in this, and Team Indus could be the first to achieve this if successful.Landing a robot on the moon, travel half a kilometer on the surface, and send data and photos to the earth.$20 million first prize, $5 million second prize, $4 million bonuses, $1 million diversity award.Google.: X Prize Foundation.December 31, 2017.Astrobiotic Technology (US), Moon Express (US), Part Time Scientists (Germany), Team Indus (India), Hakuto (Japan).SUBRATA MITRA & SHEKHAR KIRANI of Accel PartnersAngel investor SHARAD SHARMANANDAN NILEKANI, cofounder of InfosysVIVEK RAGHAVAN, chief product manager of UIDAI (the Aadhaar project)PALLAW SHARMA, director of analytics at MicrosoftAngel investor and entrepreneur BALA PARTHASARTHYSUNIL KALRA, entrepreneur & investorPARAS CHOPRA, entrepreneurPALLAV NADHANI, entrepreneur and investor