Bengaluru, Circa 1972

A young Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) scientist Parameshwaran Sivasankaran Nair signed off a letter addressed to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). He sought a software product called NASTRAN that helped design more efficient space vehicles. NASA had released it to the public a year before. Nair was one of many scientists working on Indias first satellite Aryabhata at ISROs satellite division, then in Peenya in Bengaluru.

Three weeks passed, and a reply arrived in the ISRO mailbox in the negative. The letter said something along the lines of: If you have a software, we can try and exchange. But we dont give such software. Nair turned to the treasure trove that was the Indian Institute of Science library, which housed the countrys finest aerospace journals. What did NASA know? ISRO scientists had to write their own code. With no computer in Bengaluru, they travelled to Ahmedabad or the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras, to access one.

Noida, December 2011

Nirmal Suraj Gadde, 21, was a few months from graduating from IIT-Kharagpur. Schooled in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, the lean lad wasnt bothered about the Delhi winter. The aerospace engineer from Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, wanted to work at TeamIndus, but his only contact with boss Rahul Narayan for weeks was on the mobile phone. Worse, Narayan wanted him as an intern.

His first assignment at the company that was working out of Noida: We are going to the moon. What I need you to do is study previous moon missions. Tell me how trajectories are done. Gadde did that, but hit a block after studying several research papers from NASAs Space Science Data Coordinated Archive online. Going to the moon is not that tough. Its about getting the timing correct, he told Narayan, adding that he could calculate the trajectory. Maybe there is some software solution for it? asked the voice in Gaddes phone. Gadde found two options: an AGI software priced in the region of Rs1 crore. Or, a free open source tool: General Mission Analysis Tool. The satellite STK (software tool kit) is very costly, Gadde said, so I will go with the open source toolkit.

Can you walk to my cabin? Narayan asked. Open the drawer. The STK CD is there. Use it. You have this software here? Have you done anything with it? Gadde didnt know that Narayan had no aerospace background. No, I havent installed it yet. I will give you a contact to figure out the licence, the boss replied. Can I install it on my machine? Gadde asked. Narayan thought for a moment. No problem. You are the only employee right now.

But how did a bootstrapped entrepreneur like Narayan get his hands on the Rs1 crore software?

The Google Lunar XPrize (GLXP).

This global contest has a $30 million prize purse for teams that can land a spacecraft on the moon, get a robot to move 500 m on the surface, and send back high-definition video footage to earth. XPrize, a non-profit organisation that designs and manages public competitions like GLXP, had sent a tool kit comprising the AGI software to more than 30 GLXP applicants. One of them was TeamIndus, founded by Narayan with Indranil Chakraborty (the only cofounder with an aerospace background at inception), Sameer Joshi, Julius Amrit and Dilip Chabria. TeamIndus is among the final five that will set off for the moon later this year. And ISROs Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle XL will inject them into lower earth orbit.

What makes these audacious space missions possible? Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and aerospace company Blue Origin, told this writer when he was in Bengaluru in 2014. All the computation required now is extremely low cost, he said. What Blue Origin can do with 350 people couldnt have been done by 1,000 people 20 or even 10 years ago. Now you can do computational fluid dynamics, say, to simulate whats happening inside a rocket thrust chamber. Blue Origin does such experiments on a computer, and then builds the hardware.

At its very essence, TeamIndus and Axiom Research Labs, the company that houses it is on track to becoming a citizen of that space industry. It is the first private sector company from India that is readying a space mission.

Shooting for the Moon

After Gadde joined in 2012, he used all the gravitational parameters and physics built into the AGI software to design moon missions. Back then, it took him more than five hours to do one trip to the moon. He would get the trajectory close to it, not quite on the moon. By now, hes done more than 5,000 moon landing. It now takes him five minutes to calculate the most suitable route. We have laid down the path. Then, navigation is about whether we are following that path or not. And then, how do we control?

In the same period, Axiom Research Labs has evolved into a 110-employee organisation, including Nair, that young ISRO scientist from the 1970s. He is employee No. 25, and has embraced the new era, where young engineers can email the University of Colorado Boulder for a mission operations software that tracks a spacecraft when in flight and buy other software off the shelf. His only grouse: the software influence is growing at the cost of aerospace engineers losing touch with hand-calculations for basic design the physical understanding of engineering.

There is plenty of information available on the net now, says Nagapathi Chidambar Bhat, 69, another ex-ISRO scientist and TeamIndus employee. India didnt even have a Xerox machine in our days. Bhat and Nair are among eight former ISRO scientists at Axiom Research Labs. These and 20 other experienced consultants from the space fraternity (professors, scientists) form a core group, with a bulk of the work managed and done by engineers in their 20s.

A TeamIndus may not have been possible in the US because there are many established aerospace companies and it requires a lot of capital to create an aerospace startup, says Vivek Raghavan, who heads the technology function at TeamIndus as a volunteer, in addition to being an investor and director on the board of Axiom. Here, the unique thing is that a bunch of talented engineers graduated and TeamIndus became an employer of choice. It has allowed us to build a large team despite not having large funding in the early years, compared with other teams competing for the GLXP.

The unique aspect of the journey to date has been a systems-engineering culture that marries the experience of ISRO veterans with the work of young engineers, many of whom are here because they love aerospace engineering and see this as a gateway for a career in it. Take the ones in their early 20s: systems engineer ES Paul Edward, in the structures and mechanisms team, who finished his masters from Cranfield University, UK; Karan Vaish, an aerospace engineer who has already worked on the moon rover. Nakul Kukar, another systems engineer who trained at the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology, Department of Space, in Thiruvananthapuram, even worked with ISRO for some time before joining Axiom.

Each one of the kids who joined four or five years ago is now ready and primed to go to the next level, says Narayan, fleet commander (aerospace parlance for CEO) of Axiom. They will be able to lead a much bigger team, to lead a program. In any industry someone starts it. Maybe, Axiom is that entity for private aerospace. I am fairly certain that a lot of what we do here is creating a template for what more can be done from India. But the ISRO confluence has been crucial, especially for an organisation that cannot afford to look back on what is a $65 million moon mission. And the costs are eye-popping, considering that Axiom has placed 95% of the orders for equipment and material in the US (10+ vendors), Europe (10+ vendors), Japan (one), apart from home (7).

The TeamIndus spacecraft (or lander) has tanks that will cost $2.5 million, a $3 million engine and an IMU (inertial measurement unit) to manoeuvre the spacecraft that costs $1.5 million. The vibration test of the spacecraft at ISRO (over Rs50 lakh) costs more than that version of the spacecraft. The XPrize has already awarded a $1 million milestone prize to TeamIndus, and ISROs Antrix sign-off for the PSLV deal has been another huge validation. Says Narayan: There are rough edges. But as an organisation, we are able to punch way above our weight.

The real challenge is now, says Nair. Overcoming technological and time constraints, testing, showing the functionality and, of course, the mission itself. Compared with what we have been through, the biggest challenge is in the next 12 months. The ISRO veterans have already instilled something invaluable: a review structure.

The spacecraft: The all-aluminium quadrapod has been designed and developed by TeamIndus to survive temperatures between -230C and 150C.

Do, Review, Repeat

To do any space mission, there are 11 or 12 standard steps to follow. Narayan didnt know about this until 2012. That year he met Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan, who had retired as ISRO chairman and was member of the now disbanded Planning Commission in Delhi. The 15-minute appointment went on for more than an hour. Kasturirangan said TeamIndus is on the right track, a validation that would in time prove crucial in many of the ISRO veterans making time for Axiom.

The Moon Mission is divided into around 10 subsystems (See Inside TeamIndus Technology Subsystems), each of which has four 4 to 12 people. There is an expert or manager in each subsystem. Since 2013, Axiom has separately built a group of 20-odd independent reviewers who know about the mission. Early on, it was OK to start from scratch and tell somebody in half hour how we got here and what the design is. Now we need people who have reviewed us before, so they dont have to start from scratch, Narayan explains.

From December 13 last year, TeamIndus had a weeklong review of all systems. Forty reviewers sat together for the systems-engineering overview, and then broke into groups of six or eight that reviewed each subsystem. Reviews can take half a day to two days. I can choose to do a review every two months, says Narayan. Or when I have made a dramatic change, like a supplier backing out. In that case, a change in component has an impact on power, mechanism and structures. Therefore I want to do a review. Every subsystem knows it has to get an independent review before proceeding to the next level. The next all-systems review is in April. Nair says ISRO has always had such an open environment. If you attend an ISRO review, you see the real nature of analysis and criticism, he says. Even for Chandrayaan I, a lot of changes were made after every review for improvement. I see the effort to emulate our processes here at TeamIndus. The young engineers couldnt have asked for a more testing environment, while working on subsystems. Such a project approach also lends itself to a flat organisation. At ISRO too, everyones work was open to very critical reviews. Everyone could question, criticise. There would be arguments. Once the decision was made, it would be executed as a team, Nair says.

Epilogue

Will Axiom evolve into a Blue Origin? Perhaps not, with the capital at its disposal. It looks improbable for Indias private sector today. Aerospace engineering is learned by experience, says Rishikesha Krishnan, director and professor of strategy at Indian Institute of Management, Indore. Organisations like Boeing or ISRO have cumulative expertise who can build from the experience of trying and failing, Krishnan explains. That is hard to replicate and cant be bought. The other issue is material aerospace is all about having very strong but lightweight material, which India currently imports or are not available because of import restrictions.

Axiom has started on the path by blending ISRO wisdom with an organisational model. The market they target needs to be deep, if not a mile wide. Bhat, the ex-ISRO scientist, says Indias private sector can have an infrastructure to build satellites rather than focus on launching rockets. Building and testing is one of the key areas which we have to turn into a world-class capability, so that satellites can be built and tested from India, he explains, while the others compete over preparations and launch. Even this slice of an opportunity calls for huge investments. And the moonshot will prove critical to draw attention to India and Axiom.

The team has made a small dent in the global supply chain by making it to the top five at the GLXP contest. Dhruv Batra, Jedi master (program), has been instrumental in stitching together the vendor base with global players, notably in the US. But when the team started meeting vendors, he heard the following from one of the companies there: We have the financial muscle to pull off what TeamIndus wants to do. But do you have the technical capabilities to do what you want to do?

TeamIndus was in the US to collect the milestone prize for its spacecraft. But the vendors had grown used to several other GLXP contenders approaching them for sweet deals or freebies. We are not here to donate our products for charity, a vendor said. Axiom had done its legal paperwork and emphasised, This is going to be a commercial venture.

The rest is here:

How Axiom Research Labs has emerged as India's first private ... - Economic Times