TeamIndus & Rahul Narayan’s Lunar Dreams

TeamIndus, founded by Rahul Narayan and a team of engineers, emerged as one of India’s earliest private aerospace ventures with its sights set on the Moon. The team, which included ex-ISRO scientists and young engineers, built a lunar lander from scratch in a country with no private spaceflight ecosystem. The vehicle, later dubbed HHK1, was designed to ride aboard ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). Despite the Google Lunar XPRIZE’s cancellation in 2018, TeamIndus continued lunar ambitions post-contest, repositioning itself as a commercial lunar services company. The company helped create a precedent for Indian startups to build space-grade hardware, navigate policy hurdles, and dream at planetary scales.

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Where is the democratization of Space Tourism going in 2025 (Space Tech)

Space tourism involves traveling to space for recreational, leisure, or business purposes, typically involving paying a fee to travel aboard spacecraft designed for this purpose. Early commercial concepts emerged in the mid-20th century, with milestones such as Dennis Tito becoming the first self-funded space tourist in 2001, Mark Shuttleworth becoming the first African in space, and SpaceShipOne winning the Ansari X Prize in 2004. Companies like Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, and SpaceX are pioneering commercial space tourism, expanding access beyond government astronauts to private individuals.

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