people occurred in the funny walking
with team Indus has systems engineer and
so they basically building India’s first
private mission to the moon so while we
may be literally going to the moon and
and that’s that’s something that’s
technologically possible as of today
it’s only not happen in the private
sphere but every challenge that we face
every day there’s a new problem that’s
been solved by other people but the
information is not available in in
public public archives you’ll have to
figure that problem out so break that
down into a physics problem of chemistry
problem and and solve that and every
time we solve that we feel we’re helping
architect of something something that’s
new in India one moonshot at a time and
and that that’s basically the term that
we give every one of our aspirations as
one moon shot at a time so there’s this
a lot of questioning that happens both
both within our own team each each of
our engineers each of the scientists who
work with us
and even when we speak to the public as
to why would you want to go to the moon
and it’s it’s sort of a question that
that I asked back asking that if you had
a dream and you wanted to chase it and
and you were you were given the freedom
to go fly not worry about what could
pull you back would you do it and the VR
team endures are are actually doing that
we we dare to dream that could we do
something that that’s that’s sort of
like what Kennedy said in the Apollo
days as in we shall go to the moon and
do they all do do the other things not
because they are easy but because they
are hard but that’s that’s exactly the
dream nobody dreams something that’s
easy there’s somebody dreams something
that’s not accessible today something
that’s beyond the our each but that
that’s what we’re trying to do and we’re
trying to do this the truth
do this to make our nation proud because
as as a private mission it’s it’s not
something that you see very easily that
in India you get something that is
precious somebody who’s taking a lot of
risk for something that does not look
like a very good near time return but
but that’s that’s how it started that’s
it started with a dream and now we’re
building building the rest of the
structure around that I’ll take you
through through team indices journey and
a little bit of my personal journey as
well through so this is where it started
so a lot of science fiction novels
reading I think from the age of ten
arthur c clarke one of my favorite
authors mainly because he the expanse of
what he what he used to write about
worlds where you had colonies on titan
you had airships on venus you had the
space habitats revolving around the
earth those who sought this sort of
visions that he gave sort of both
inspired me uplifted me but also gave me
a little bit of sorrow thinking that I
look up there and don’t find that right
now there’s no ticket that I can go to
pick up and go to Mars right now but of
course you have a lot of people who are
trying to do that but it’s not yet
happen and that that’s when I came back
to the earth in this this this gentleman
dr. APJ Abdul Kalam he is my real life
inspiration he was there at a time in
India when we didn’t have a viable space
program we didn’t have something that we
could call a defense program as well so
he’s also known as the missile man but
not many know that he was the one who
helped kickstart if the Indian
government’s first attempt to get to the
moon he he suggested why not we we do
something like the Chandrayaan mission
why not we put an impactor on the
spacecraft and let that drop to the moon
so that we have planted the Indian flag
on the moon so he’s he’s been an
inspiration both for me and a lot of
people in my team I had the fortune of
meeting him and I think I was I was 14
in school a huge impression on me and
and I’ve basically taken up aerospace
engineering
as as my career after meeting him what
you see here is is the champion once was
four days before it got integrated with
the launch vehicle 2008 I think
September 2008 when it launched from
from India went to the went to the moon
and of course made those those
discoveries that confirm that there is
water on the poles of something that’s
that’s pushed private entities to start
looking at space exploration very very
seriously because not not before long
it’s it’s going to be commercially
viable and it’s going to be competition
before you can even get there so we need
to be ready to see and recognize that
particular demand so let me introduce
the Google Lunar XPrize and expand a
little bit on that which so this this
was a global competition it was launched
in 2007 by the XPrize foundation the
problem statement basically is a private
entity 90% privately funded you could
get government grants for up to 10% of
the total investment get to the moon
soft land hasn’t don’t don’t damage it
as you go land they’re more cross the
lunar surface 500 meters at least and
send back high-definition images and
live broadcast back to the earth so
there’s there’s a lot of the
technologies that that has been spelt
out in that problem statement that
exists as of today but not in the hands
of of private entities it’s it’s not
accessible if you were a huge superpower
like the United States you could afford
to do these things but as a private
entity that’s where the challenge
challenge exists and that’s the reason
that the XPrize foundation wanted to
give this private give private
enterprises this particular opportunity
to try and do that and thereby reduce
the cost of doing this and hence open up
the access to space team Indus is one of
five still-standing teams in this
competition it started off with nearly
30 teams it came down to 16 teams I
think in 2015 and now there are just
five teams in the in the competition and
teaming does is is the only
representation from India and this was
actually a
it was when we registered for the
competition that there’s nobody else in
India was doing it and sort of we were
procrastinating as in if somebody else
comes up probably we’d help them and
what do we do and it was I think six
hours before the deadline closed I think
it was 2010 31st December that we ended
up registering for the competition and
that’s that’s been a amazing journey
from a little bit of numbers and how
we’re trying to do this thing so broke
the problem statement into one we get
off the earth get into space we would
need a spacecraft probably with its own
propulsion system that could go all the
way to the moon it would need of course
a lot of propellant and a bulk of what
we would launch up would would be just
propellant that would have to be burnt
all the way till we touched down on the
surface and once we get to the moon then
then of course we put our Rover out
deploy the robot drive it from the earth
and hopefully claim the price a little
more in depth so we have the earth here
we have them on there and it’s it’s
roughly four lakh kilometers in between
and there’s a brutal mechanics which
says that you can’t go in a straight
line so you need to loop the loop
multiple times and get there so that you
save the propellant and hence launch a
lesser mass on the on the rocket and in
in space it basically says that a gram
of of launch mass saved is worth its
value in gold so and that’s that’s
actually also our costing model so the
the launch vehicle leaves us in in the
first of it what we call g1 so that gets
us as far as 70 thousand kilometers from
the surface we do a small test burn
raise the orbit to another ten thousand
once that returns back and this this
orbit takes like 28 hours for us to get
back to this point we perform a maneuver
what we call as the translunar injection
that gets us slingshotted all the way to
the moon that’s a four and a half day
journey and we are tracking this from
the ground using multiple earth stations
so one of them is close to Bangalore
this is the Indian deep space network
and and since the Earth rotates and
in the same location after roughly 12
hours of seeing it from Bangla we’d have
to shift to the JPL station from
California so that that intercepting
with the with the moon that occurs when
basically California is looking at the
moon so we get into a weekly week
capture of it so basically we capture
orbit is that once we perform them in
over here it’s it’s just there for a
while and if we were to go another loop
it would just escape from the moon’s
gravity and then get out and probably
come back and hit the butt or just leave
the whole Earth Moon system so it’s very
critical that we reduce the altitude
that we are at also get further and
further closer to the moon’s
gravitational influence once we get
close enough we we start our lunar
descent so that’s from an altitude of 12
kilometers now this is is is basically
the most crucial part what what they
call at times for Mars as seven minutes
of Terror so it’s actually 15 minutes
for us it’s a little more prolonged we
start at at an altitude of 12 kilometers
as I said in the previous one and the
the speed that we’re going at is 1.7
kilometers a second so if you were to
make any human judgement you would have
to do it in less than a second because
if you missed say sending a particular
instruction to the computer it would
have traveled nearly two kilometres away
in that one second and there’s a time
lag as well between the moon and not so
if you were to make a phone call from
here over wireless or something you
would say hi somebody would say hi and
you would hear that 1.7 into 2 so
three-and-a-half seconds later you would
get hello or hi or an acknowledgment
basically so we can’t afford to have
that sort of a delay so then we thought
let’s let’s build an autonomous system
so descent is autonomous from the from
the time it starts all the way till it
ends and we will never know or we would
actually know if something goes wrong
because we would stop listening about it
but we cannot affect anything that
happens all of it is just like a mere
spectator all our work all our work of
the last five to six years
is just in watching this thing unfold
and this this is how a spacecraft looks
like it’s it weighs 600 kilograms when
when they load it onto the launch
vehicle 400 kilograms of just propellant
200 kilograms of actual hardware out of
which we have 20 kilograms of payload
some of it is our Rover that will that
will attempt the finded meter trek the
rest of it is something that we’re doing
a commercial returns with so this is
something that can help sustain our
business the landing site that we’ve
chosen is in the northwestern quadrant
of the near side of the moon so whenever
we look at the moon we look at the same
side and we can always look at our
landing site from any point on the earth
in in every 12 hours basically we’d be
able to see that particular spot all the
time so we’d have unlimited
communications with with that particular
location and the the second and third
part so the problem statement is
basically going finded meters and taking
the high-definition images so this is a
rover
she’s quite iike and she’s four wheeled
all-electric so Lepard
has three cameras two of which are on
this mast they’re a stereo pair it sort
of gives human vision so the controllers
on the ground can basically see what the
rover sees make judgments of depth and
and see whether there are hazards in
front whether you need to negotiate them
or go over them the the sort of wheel
designs that we’ve done over here
basically allows us to go up to and that
centimeters a second that that’s the
correct unit so it’s ten centimeters a
second that’s the top speed
it’s the fastest in class for any
planetary Rover and yeah it can do
slopes and it’s really lightweight so we
actually started with a rover that
weighed around 15 kilograms and yeah to
make it more viable and optimized we had
to bring down that mass to seven that’s
where it is right now so as a private
enterprise trying to trying to go to the
moon
this this gives us a huge advantage
it lets us take what we’re doing and and
take it to the people it helps us
inspire educate get them aware of of the
this is something that that that we’ve
we’ve put out booth is as a campaign and
and and to make this this really really
aware that it’s not just a moonshot that
we are attempting we’d like to call it
her Indian come on short that is you can
own it as as much as us if if you are
aware of what what it takes to do it and
what impact it can have so through this
we we hope to inspire people give them
an experience that that’s that’s not
really been there in India and and hope
to unleash the potential that we have in
India especially the next generation so
that they can do a lot better than what
we’ve tried to do for this we’ve we’ve
started a few initiatives so they are
not directly tied to just just going to
space but it’s but it’s it touches a lot
of different places that that we’d
really like to see development done and
so one of them is something that it’s
called lab to moon it’s it’s a global
competition for people under the age of
25 to design and build an experiment
that that can help prove that we can
have a sustainable life on the moon so
this there’s always been this this
transition period from science fiction
to reality that can you really have moon
bases how would you do it and and it’s
and it’s really about the younger people
because they have that innocence and
lack of fear if they were to try and
build an experiment that that could have
even 1% chance of success
that is all that we need we don’t need
to really put that to a government
agency until can you build me a space
habitat can you give me a healthcare
that can work in low gravity there’s
another thing that we have done what we
call is moonshot on wheels this is this
is a combination of what we call as
inspiration through through the things
that that we’ve tried to do and what
what others be
missions I’ve tried to basically reach
far as well as experiential learning so
this is a bus that would travel across
11 states nearly more than more than
12,000 kilometers reach as many schools
as it can on the way so touch
statistically around 36,000 school
children and give them an opportunity to
see what where they can be when they get
to choose their career so stem and a
little bit of learning on on space focus
things basically it it helps them expand
the horizon see that if I can study
something that is applicable in space
then obviously there are applications on
here on earth and that that sort of
stretches their perspective and then
the last initiative is is something that
that we’ve tried to put out an
invitation to every single Indian to be
an equal stakeholder in our success so
if it’s if it’s a successful mission
it’s a successful mission for India it’s
a successful private enterprise that is
able to work as a business model out of
India by doing the things that normally
people are really scared to do who’d
really want to take a risk of putting
seventy two hundred million dollars into
launching something to the moon which
might not come back but just the just
the whole enterprise of going there and
developing all those technologies which
which have a huge waterfall effect on
everything else in society that that’s
something that we’re trying to do in and
we’d like as many people to be a
stakeholder in that so what what we’re
giving an opportunity is that people can
get their names engraved on a titanium
cube that we have will mount that on the
spacecraft and send it along with the
spacecraft to the moon so it remains
there for posterity it’s a symbol of
what a million people want to do
together to take India out so that’s
that’s basically what what we hope to to
start off so set set that snowflake into
motion and probably unleash all sorts of
potential that that’s there within the
country we can reach higher if if if we
dream
if we walk upon those dreams and
anything anything is possible basically
so counting down to India’s Apollo
moment when we run the launchpad on 28
December 2017 and hope to make everybody
proud
thank you [Applause]
with team Indus has systems engineer and
so they basically building India’s first
private mission to the moon so while we
may be literally going to the moon and
and that’s that’s something that’s
technologically possible as of today
it’s only not happen in the private
sphere but every challenge that we face
every day there’s a new problem that’s
been solved by other people but the
information is not available in in
public public archives you’ll have to
figure that problem out so break that
down into a physics problem of chemistry
problem and and solve that and every
time we solve that we feel we’re helping
architect of something something that’s
new in India one moonshot at a time and
and that that’s basically the term that
we give every one of our aspirations as
one moon shot at a time so there’s this
a lot of questioning that happens both
both within our own team each each of
our engineers each of the scientists who
work with us
and even when we speak to the public as
to why would you want to go to the moon
and it’s it’s sort of a question that
that I asked back asking that if you had
a dream and you wanted to chase it and
and you were you were given the freedom
to go fly not worry about what could
pull you back would you do it and the VR
team endures are are actually doing that
we we dare to dream that could we do
something that that’s that’s sort of
like what Kennedy said in the Apollo
days as in we shall go to the moon and
do they all do do the other things not
because they are easy but because they
are hard but that’s that’s exactly the
dream nobody dreams something that’s
easy there’s somebody dreams something
that’s not accessible today something
that’s beyond the our each but that
that’s what we’re trying to do and we’re
trying to do this the truth
do this to make our nation proud because
as as a private mission it’s it’s not
something that you see very easily that
in India you get something that is
precious somebody who’s taking a lot of
risk for something that does not look
like a very good near time return but
but that’s that’s how it started that’s
it started with a dream and now we’re
building building the rest of the
structure around that I’ll take you
through through team indices journey and
a little bit of my personal journey as
well through so this is where it started
so a lot of science fiction novels
reading I think from the age of ten
arthur c clarke one of my favorite
authors mainly because he the expanse of
what he what he used to write about
worlds where you had colonies on titan
you had airships on venus you had the
space habitats revolving around the
earth those who sought this sort of
visions that he gave sort of both
inspired me uplifted me but also gave me
a little bit of sorrow thinking that I
look up there and don’t find that right
now there’s no ticket that I can go to
pick up and go to Mars right now but of
course you have a lot of people who are
trying to do that but it’s not yet
happen and that that’s when I came back
to the earth in this this this gentleman
dr. APJ Abdul Kalam he is my real life
inspiration he was there at a time in
India when we didn’t have a viable space
program we didn’t have something that we
could call a defense program as well so
he’s also known as the missile man but
not many know that he was the one who
helped kickstart if the Indian
government’s first attempt to get to the
moon he he suggested why not we we do
something like the Chandrayaan mission
why not we put an impactor on the
spacecraft and let that drop to the moon
so that we have planted the Indian flag
on the moon so he’s he’s been an
inspiration both for me and a lot of
people in my team I had the fortune of
meeting him and I think I was I was 14
in school a huge impression on me and
and I’ve basically taken up aerospace
engineering
as as my career after meeting him what
you see here is is the champion once was
four days before it got integrated with
the launch vehicle 2008 I think
September 2008 when it launched from
from India went to the went to the moon
and of course made those those
discoveries that confirm that there is
water on the poles of something that’s
that’s pushed private entities to start
looking at space exploration very very
seriously because not not before long
it’s it’s going to be commercially
viable and it’s going to be competition
before you can even get there so we need
to be ready to see and recognize that
particular demand so let me introduce
the Google Lunar XPrize and expand a
little bit on that which so this this
was a global competition it was launched
in 2007 by the XPrize foundation the
problem statement basically is a private
entity 90% privately funded you could
get government grants for up to 10% of
the total investment get to the moon
soft land hasn’t don’t don’t damage it
as you go land they’re more cross the
lunar surface 500 meters at least and
send back high-definition images and
live broadcast back to the earth so
there’s there’s a lot of the
technologies that that has been spelt
out in that problem statement that
exists as of today but not in the hands
of of private entities it’s it’s not
accessible if you were a huge superpower
like the United States you could afford
to do these things but as a private
entity that’s where the challenge
challenge exists and that’s the reason
that the XPrize foundation wanted to
give this private give private
enterprises this particular opportunity
to try and do that and thereby reduce
the cost of doing this and hence open up
the access to space team Indus is one of
five still-standing teams in this
competition it started off with nearly
30 teams it came down to 16 teams I
think in 2015 and now there are just
five teams in the in the competition and
teaming does is is the only
representation from India and this was
actually a
it was when we registered for the
competition that there’s nobody else in
India was doing it and sort of we were
procrastinating as in if somebody else
comes up probably we’d help them and
what do we do and it was I think six
hours before the deadline closed I think
it was 2010 31st December that we ended
up registering for the competition and
that’s that’s been a amazing journey
from a little bit of numbers and how
we’re trying to do this thing so broke
the problem statement into one we get
off the earth get into space we would
need a spacecraft probably with its own
propulsion system that could go all the
way to the moon it would need of course
a lot of propellant and a bulk of what
we would launch up would would be just
propellant that would have to be burnt
all the way till we touched down on the
surface and once we get to the moon then
then of course we put our Rover out
deploy the robot drive it from the earth
and hopefully claim the price a little
more in depth so we have the earth here
we have them on there and it’s it’s
roughly four lakh kilometers in between
and there’s a brutal mechanics which
says that you can’t go in a straight
line so you need to loop the loop
multiple times and get there so that you
save the propellant and hence launch a
lesser mass on the on the rocket and in
in space it basically says that a gram
of of launch mass saved is worth its
value in gold so and that’s that’s
actually also our costing model so the
the launch vehicle leaves us in in the
first of it what we call g1 so that gets
us as far as 70 thousand kilometers from
the surface we do a small test burn
raise the orbit to another ten thousand
once that returns back and this this
orbit takes like 28 hours for us to get
back to this point we perform a maneuver
what we call as the translunar injection
that gets us slingshotted all the way to
the moon that’s a four and a half day
journey and we are tracking this from
the ground using multiple earth stations
so one of them is close to Bangalore
this is the Indian deep space network
and and since the Earth rotates and
in the same location after roughly 12
hours of seeing it from Bangla we’d have
to shift to the JPL station from
California so that that intercepting
with the with the moon that occurs when
basically California is looking at the
moon so we get into a weekly week
capture of it so basically we capture
orbit is that once we perform them in
over here it’s it’s just there for a
while and if we were to go another loop
it would just escape from the moon’s
gravity and then get out and probably
come back and hit the butt or just leave
the whole Earth Moon system so it’s very
critical that we reduce the altitude
that we are at also get further and
further closer to the moon’s
gravitational influence once we get
close enough we we start our lunar
descent so that’s from an altitude of 12
kilometers now this is is is basically
the most crucial part what what they
call at times for Mars as seven minutes
of Terror so it’s actually 15 minutes
for us it’s a little more prolonged we
start at at an altitude of 12 kilometers
as I said in the previous one and the
the speed that we’re going at is 1.7
kilometers a second so if you were to
make any human judgement you would have
to do it in less than a second because
if you missed say sending a particular
instruction to the computer it would
have traveled nearly two kilometres away
in that one second and there’s a time
lag as well between the moon and not so
if you were to make a phone call from
here over wireless or something you
would say hi somebody would say hi and
you would hear that 1.7 into 2 so
three-and-a-half seconds later you would
get hello or hi or an acknowledgment
basically so we can’t afford to have
that sort of a delay so then we thought
let’s let’s build an autonomous system
so descent is autonomous from the from
the time it starts all the way till it
ends and we will never know or we would
actually know if something goes wrong
because we would stop listening about it
but we cannot affect anything that
happens all of it is just like a mere
spectator all our work all our work of
the last five to six years
is just in watching this thing unfold
and this this is how a spacecraft looks
like it’s it weighs 600 kilograms when
when they load it onto the launch
vehicle 400 kilograms of just propellant
200 kilograms of actual hardware out of
which we have 20 kilograms of payload
some of it is our Rover that will that
will attempt the finded meter trek the
rest of it is something that we’re doing
a commercial returns with so this is
something that can help sustain our
business the landing site that we’ve
chosen is in the northwestern quadrant
of the near side of the moon so whenever
we look at the moon we look at the same
side and we can always look at our
landing site from any point on the earth
in in every 12 hours basically we’d be
able to see that particular spot all the
time so we’d have unlimited
communications with with that particular
location and the the second and third
part so the problem statement is
basically going finded meters and taking
the high-definition images so this is a
rover
she’s quite iike and she’s four wheeled
all-electric so Lepard
has three cameras two of which are on
this mast they’re a stereo pair it sort
of gives human vision so the controllers
on the ground can basically see what the
rover sees make judgments of depth and
and see whether there are hazards in
front whether you need to negotiate them
or go over them the the sort of wheel
designs that we’ve done over here
basically allows us to go up to and that
centimeters a second that that’s the
correct unit so it’s ten centimeters a
second that’s the top speed
it’s the fastest in class for any
planetary Rover and yeah it can do
slopes and it’s really lightweight so we
actually started with a rover that
weighed around 15 kilograms and yeah to
make it more viable and optimized we had
to bring down that mass to seven that’s
where it is right now so as a private
enterprise trying to trying to go to the
moon
this this gives us a huge advantage
it lets us take what we’re doing and and
take it to the people it helps us
inspire educate get them aware of of the
this is something that that that we’ve
we’ve put out booth is as a campaign and
and and to make this this really really
aware that it’s not just a moonshot that
we are attempting we’d like to call it
her Indian come on short that is you can
own it as as much as us if if you are
aware of what what it takes to do it and
what impact it can have so through this
we we hope to inspire people give them
an experience that that’s that’s not
really been there in India and and hope
to unleash the potential that we have in
India especially the next generation so
that they can do a lot better than what
we’ve tried to do for this we’ve we’ve
started a few initiatives so they are
not directly tied to just just going to
space but it’s but it’s it touches a lot
of different places that that we’d
really like to see development done and
so one of them is something that it’s
called lab to moon it’s it’s a global
competition for people under the age of
25 to design and build an experiment
that that can help prove that we can
have a sustainable life on the moon so
this there’s always been this this
transition period from science fiction
to reality that can you really have moon
bases how would you do it and and it’s
and it’s really about the younger people
because they have that innocence and
lack of fear if they were to try and
build an experiment that that could have
even 1% chance of success
that is all that we need we don’t need
to really put that to a government
agency until can you build me a space
habitat can you give me a healthcare
that can work in low gravity there’s
another thing that we have done what we
call is moonshot on wheels this is this
is a combination of what we call as
inspiration through through the things
that that we’ve tried to do and what
what others be
missions I’ve tried to basically reach
far as well as experiential learning so
this is a bus that would travel across
11 states nearly more than more than
12,000 kilometers reach as many schools
as it can on the way so touch
statistically around 36,000 school
children and give them an opportunity to
see what where they can be when they get
to choose their career so stem and a
little bit of learning on on space focus
things basically it it helps them expand
the horizon see that if I can study
something that is applicable in space
then obviously there are applications on
here on earth and that that sort of
stretches their perspective and then
the last initiative is is something that
that we’ve tried to put out an
invitation to every single Indian to be
an equal stakeholder in our success so
if it’s if it’s a successful mission
it’s a successful mission for India it’s
a successful private enterprise that is
able to work as a business model out of
India by doing the things that normally
people are really scared to do who’d
really want to take a risk of putting
seventy two hundred million dollars into
launching something to the moon which
might not come back but just the just
the whole enterprise of going there and
developing all those technologies which
which have a huge waterfall effect on
everything else in society that that’s
something that we’re trying to do in and
we’d like as many people to be a
stakeholder in that so what what we’re
giving an opportunity is that people can
get their names engraved on a titanium
cube that we have will mount that on the
spacecraft and send it along with the
spacecraft to the moon so it remains
there for posterity it’s a symbol of
what a million people want to do
together to take India out so that’s
that’s basically what what we hope to to
start off so set set that snowflake into
motion and probably unleash all sorts of
potential that that’s there within the
country we can reach higher if if if we
dream
if we walk upon those dreams and
anything anything is possible basically
so counting down to India’s Apollo
moment when we run the launchpad on 28
December 2017 and hope to make everybody
proud
thank you [Applause]
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