From Bengaluru to moon: NASA picks homegrown company as part of its lunar expedition in 2020
TeamIndus, incorporated as Axiom Research Labs, is a private company headquartered in Bengaluru. The company joined the consortium led by OrbitBeyond, a US space transportation company, in November, 2018. NASA has tasked them to do lander engineering, which refers to the process of landing on the moon.
FollowBengaluru: A Bengaluru-based aerospace company is moon-bound as it is one among the consortium of companies chosen by the US space agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), for its next lunar mission in 2020.
TeamIndus (TI), incorporated as Axiom Research Labs, is a private company headquartered in Bengaluru. The company joined the consortium led by OrbitBeyond, a US space transportation company, in November 2018, and NASA has tasked them to do lander engineering, which refers to the process of landing on the moon.
TI will have to deliver science and technology payloads under the commercial lunar payload services (CLPS). By this, the company along with the other companies in the consortium, is expected to transport small robots and rovers to the moon with the goals of exploration. TI has lander-making credentials as well.
As NASA made announcements regarding its upcoming moon mission, it was a call for all the private aerospace companies like TI to call bids.
TI founder and leader Rahul Narayanan tweeted as the company joined the consortium stating that they continue to be moon-bound.
The professionals in TI, who hail from different backgrounds such as science, technology, finance and media, came together in 2010 with the aim to win the Google Lunar X Prize competition that was announced in 2007. The spacecraft and landing systems were already in the developing stage in 2011 while contending for Google’s global lunar and landing competition.
The competition was called off as the chosen finalists could not complete their mission to the moon due to several reasons.
