India’s ‘Team Indus’ plans to brew beer on moon

Man's fascination with alcoholic beverages is as old as civilisation itself; and now with increasing space exploration it has taken a new turn: what would a drink made in low-gravity conditions taste like?

A privately funded space team – from priggish and prohibition-prone India, of all places - is participating in a global competition, in which they propose an experiment to brew beer on the moon using yeast.

The aim of the experiment is to basically test and observe the survivability of yeast in space and how it performs under moon's low-gravity conditions.

 Unique as it sounds, this is not the first attempt to make alcohol outside the gravitational confines of earth. Back in October 2011, Scottish distillery Ardberg sent a quantity of its whisky distillate (the liquid resulting from distillation which is normally filled into oak barrels for maturation), along with oak wood shavings, aboard a Soyuz booster rocket to the International Space Station. At the same time on Earth, a control experiment was similarly initiated on the Scottish isle of Islay.

The contents were delivered back to Ardbeg in November 2014, after a total of 971 days in micro-gravity conditions, and carefully compared with the control sample.

The results – well, without going into winery jargon like ''woody aroma, hints of cedar and sweet smoke, balsamic flavours, a distant fruitiness'', let's just say the space whisky tasted different from good old earth Scotch (See: UK distillery in space whisky experiment finds 'space brew' noticeably stronger).

Back to the Indian beer experiment: according to a report published in Space.com on 25 January, 25 teams have been selected to compete for the Google Lunar XPRIZE and a spot aboard an ISRO moon lander, scheduled for launch on 28 December this year.

Of these 25 teams, Team Indus is planning to conduct the experiment for manufacturing beer on the moon. It is a privately funded team under Axiom Research Labs Pvt Ltd, and the experiment is not governed by the Indian Space Research Organisation.

In the Lok Sabha last week, Trinamool Congress member and former Union minister Sisir Kumar Adhikari raised the question, asking the prime minister if the government was planning to brew beer on the moon. He asked, "Will the Prime Minister be pleased to state: (a) whether an Indian spacecraft is planning to brew beer on the moon; (b) if so, the details of research plan and viability of yeast test; and (c) the universal rules on moon lander therein?"

Dismissing any government involvement, minister of state in the Prime Minister's Office Jitendra Singh said there is a privately-funded team participating in a global competition to build a spacecraft for soft landing on the moon, where they are reportedly planning to execute such an experiment. And the experiment is not administered by ISRO.

"There is no plan to brew beer on the moon by any spacecraft to be made by Indian Space Research Organisation. However, Team Indus, a privately-funded team under the Axiom Research Labs Pvt Ltd, is competing for the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition towards building a spacecraft capable of soft landing and roving on the moon. The spacecraft is proposed to be launched onboard ISRO's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) under a commercial launch agreement. As understood from media reports, Team Indus is proposing an experiment to brew beer on the moon using yeast," Singh clarified.

Singh further stated that the activities in outer space are governed by United Nations treaties – the Outer Space Treaty, 1967 and the Moon Agreement 1979 being two of them, while the protection of planetary environment is governed by COSPAR (Committee on Space Research) Planetary Protection Policy 2002.

"These treaties and policies govern the scientific exploratory activities in outer space, moon and other celestial bodies using human made spacecraft, landers, rovers etc, without causing harmful contamination to the environment in outer space, moon and other celestial bodies and to earth as well by bringing back extra-terrestrial materials. Such activities need to be authorised by the State concerned," Singh said.
Ah, well. We'll leave the politics to the politicians; let's just say cheers to space beer!