 From the spectacular imagery of science fiction fantasized by writers like Arthur C. Clarke, the children of the 60s woke up to the astounding reality of humankind's first step on the lunar surface. Across 41 months, 12 astronauts explored the surface of the moon. But in 1972, almost as suddenly as they had begun, the manned missions abruptly ground to a cold halt. No human being has gone to the moon for over 40 years thereafter. The moon landing in 1969 was undoubtedly an iconic moment, but it was in 1903 that the Wright brothers undertook their first moonshot, transforming a seemingly preposterous idea into a reality that shaped the 20th century. So what defines a moonshot? How does one propel the imagination and stretch a notion beyond the ordinary? My personal dreams have been since my childhood to go to space. I grew up in the 60s when Apollo was just starting when Star Trek was coming on TV as a show and I believed and dreamed that I have a chance to go and I said I'm going to create a prize for private spaceflight. A prize that when it's won gives me my ticket to space and that was the birth of the Google Lunar X Prize. Today we're challenging private teams around the world to design and build robotic explorers and race them to the surface of the moon. The Google Lunar X Prize is the largest incentivized competition to date. Designed to seek breakthroughs in space, it offers a colossal 30 million US dollars as prize money. The reward will go to the first privately funded team that softlands a rover on the moon within a stipulated deadline, then navigates it at least 500 meters and transmits high definition mooncasts back to earth. Once, Tommy Knight, we got to know about this competition and we found out that there were a galore of teams from 33 plus teams all across the world and there was no Indian team in the competition. So we said we have to enter the fray. When the idea of going to the moon came up and we discussed this, it seemed like the next thing to do and I think we ran out doing crazy stuff on planet earth so that's the next phase to go. We kept you know looking and looking at how one could participate in this, how could India participate in this and we felt let's just go ahead and put together our own team and try and make this happen. But because this was so big we really didn't know what will work and what will not work. To deliver a moon mission, team Indus will need to charter a ride that costs about 25 million dollars on a launch vehicle developed by ISRO. The PSLV will transport their lander into low earth orbit from where they will detach and coast to the moon. The funding required for the moon shot is 35 million dollars in which bulk of it is towards the launch vehicle that we need. The prize money on offer is far less than what it is going to cost any team to do this and that's the challenge. Team Indus is a group of non-conformist unconventional dreamers who are racing against time to fulfill an audacious vision to be the first privately funded enterprise to build and land a rover on the moon. It's a very big competition that we are in and we are representing India so everything is very very exciting when you work on a mission like this so anything in space anything small goes wrong it might lead to catastrophic mistakes so we ensure that even the smallest details we look into it. I graduated my b-tech in aerospace engineering from UPS Dheradun. This is the lander structure that you see over here that's the structure that I have designed and biggest challenge is to land something where you don't know what your conditions are. I'm an aerospace engineer I am doing finite element analysis on the entire structure we have softwares where we can model the structure and apply those loads and according to those stress levels we can design our structure over and over again. PSLV is going to inject us into a highly elliptical orbit like as you can see here it's has a very high apogee the highest point of the orbit and it has a relatively low perigee so I have to design the trajectory of the total mission how it will go from the launch vehicle separation to descent orbit. Today we're just wiring up the rover I'm pretty nervous I'm pretty excited both at the same time we're we're going to see how the rover reacts to all the commands that we give let's see how it moves and let's see let's see whether the responses are as per what we expected it to be. Once the team in spacecraft touches down on the moon the rover will be deployed to begin its mission. Much like a video game designated drivers will steer it remotely over the uneven lunar terrain while its three megapixel camera will stream pictures and video down to earth. So we're looking at things people have not done earlier we're looking at information which is not easily available but designed by a group of young 21 to 26 year olds that's our team age. The days I come to work and nobody is signed in the register downstairs and I wonder you know how come no one's come in and it's full upstairs why they've been there for two days just sleeping there eating drinking with one project. So to me they are a role model for a spirit which is important for this country to transform itself as a 21st century nation with its own importance in the committee of nations in this world. Spurred by the inherent desire to discover the next generation of dreamers and explorers is all set to take their giant leap. Being the only Indian team in this prestigious global competition team and us is confident that they will aspire believe and create a legacy. We have the talent we have the caliber we have the initiative and we have the motivation and we have the patriotism so we see it all the way through for India for Team Indus for us. The idea that a group of entrepreneurs can build a spacecraft and go toe to toe with the largest governments in the world that's amazing. It's just great to see a team of young Indians take up a challenge of this magnitude and you're competing with the rest of the world but in many ways you're competing with yourself to say hey we can do it. This is the first time you're seeing an entrepreneurial effort in space research which is what Team Indus stands for and I think when they win India wins. So this is a moonshot hopefully it's not a long shot we're gonna try our best to get a few years down the line I would like to look up on the moon and tell my friends and my family that we put something out there.