Team Indus to design and build a moon lander for NASA's Artemis 2024 mission

Team Indus is part of a consortium with Orbit Beyond that has been awarded a contract of $97 million.

Tech2 News Staff|Jun 07, 2019, 21:00:06 IST

NASA is following up its Apollo mission to the Moon with its new mission Artemis in 2024.To do so, NASA has selected three commercial Moon landing service providers and an Indian start-up from Bengaluru, Team Indus, is part of a consortium that will design and build landers for the mission. NASA awarded $97 million to the consortium, which included Orbit Beyond from USA, Team Indus from India, Honeybee Robotics from USA, Ceres Robotics from USA Advanced Space from USA and Altius Space Machine from USA.

In an interview with the Times of India, Team Indus engineer Ananth Ramesh confirmed the news, "Yes, we will be building the lander. It is most likely to be built in India too." The CEO of Team Indus, Rahul Narayan, has signed the contract on Thursday, 6 June 2019.Team Indus has now joined a group of companies launching landers to different parts of the Moon ahead of the main launch of NASA's lunar lander. They will deliver payloads for NASA to the Moon and manage the launch and landing of their landers as well.Conducting these missions will help NASA prepare to send astronauts during the main Artemis to the Moon and then to Mars.[caption id="attachment_6773431" align="alignnone" width="1280"]

Commercial landers will carry NASA-provided science and technology payloads to the lunar surface, paving the way for NASA astronauts to land on the Moon by 2024.

Image credits: NASA[/caption]The consortium that includes Team Indus will be flying four payloads to the Mare Imbrium, a lava plain in one of Moon’s craters.The potential payloads will include instruments that will ‘conduct new lunar science’ according to a press release from NASA.There are two major reasons for NASA to carry out the Artemis mission. The first is speed – NASA wants to land the astronauts on the moon by 2024, resuming a long-awaited return of astronauts to the Moon. The second is human presence – the agency intends to establish a human presence on and around the moon by 2028.

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