It consists of a team of professionals from various backgrounds in science, technology, finance, and media, that came together in 2010 with the aim of winning the Google Lunar X Prize competition announced in 2007.
[2] Axiom Research Labs was established in 2010 with the aim to compete for the Google Lunar X Prize, and the following year it registered its team as TeamIndus.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is based in Bangalore which has also excellent aerospace companies that could help the team with building the lander and rover.
L&T was helping by reviewing designs, and Rajiv Mody, founder CEO of the engineering firm Sasken Technologies gave space in its Bangalore facility for the team to operate out of and several former ISRO scientists were providing advice.
A second fundraising round in 2016 obtained investment from people such as R. K. Damani, Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, Ashish Kacholia, Rajiv Mody, Subrata Mitra, Shekhar Kirani, and Sharad Sharma.
TeamIndus initially planned to attempt to win the endurance and distance bonus prizes by designing a lunar lander and two rovers.
[3] The lander was initially code-named HHK1, and their single rover is called ECA, an abbreviation for Ek Choti Si Asha (A Small Hope).
[2] The spacecraft has a liquid rocket engine with a thrust capability of 440 N for deceleration, and sixteen small 22 N thrusters for finer orbital maneuvers and attitude control (orientation).
[19][20][21][22] In June 2016 a letter of intent was signed with the French space agency CNES to carry the Color CMOS Camera for Space Exploration (CASPEX) micro-camera on board the team's rover,[23][24] and the signed agreement was announced on 9 January 2017, specifying that the French agency would contribute two CASPEX cameras for the ECA rover.
[26] In late 2018, Team Indus (Axiom Research Labs) signed a working agreement with OrbitBeyond[27] that bid and won a NASA CLPS award to land several commercial payloads on the Moon.