there is a word here in india that i think describes team indus's low—cost, make do approach.'ve come to the centre of mumbai, to dharavi — asia's second largest slum. here, in its tiny alleyways, "jugaad" is all around, as a desperately poor population reuses as much as is physically possible. built by workers who flocked to the city over hundreds of years, some of the houses here date back to the 1840s. up ahead, there is a pile of shredded denim which they use for fuel. they burn it to fuel the kilns, just like they burn a lot of stuff forfuel here. and there is smoke everywhere here. you can really tell the air quality is very poor. you just have to take a few lungfuls and it starts to burn the back of your throat, it makes your eyes sting. the smoke is a necessary evil for the people of dharavi. like most of the developing world, pollution has been the price india is paying for a booming economy. the smog that gives mumbai its spectacular sunsets has also made it the fifth most polluted mega city in the world. and when the sun disappears before it hits the horizon, you ca

there is a word here in india that i think describes team indus's low—cost, make do approach.f mumbai, to dharavi — asia's second largest slum. here, in its tiny alleyways, "jugaad" is all around, as a desperately poor population reuses as much as is physically possible. built by workers who flocked to the city over hundreds of years, some of the houses here date back to the 18405. it is an intense experience in the middle of an intense city. you really do get a sense of the scale of the place from up here, and it's a weird scale as well, because it's actually quite small. it's only two square kilometres, but around 1 million people live here. it's phenomenally densely packed, and it's notjust people living here and doing nothing, either, this place has a working infrastructure and a working economy. this place really does work. 10,000 dharavi businesses generate 30 billion rupees for mumbai every year. they make things and they recycle things. like all those plastic bottles drying on the roof, which are shredded into reusable plastic pellets. the whole production line is itse

rahul narayan is the co—founder of team indus and has been here since the very start of the project, at that point you had no idea how you would acheive it? yes, i googled it and figured out what wikipedia had to say about landing on the moon. you did an internet search on how to land on the moon? absolutely. laughs. did it have any useful information? yes. it said there had been 85 attempts and i think every second attempt failed to the moon. six years later, there are around 100 people working very hard here, and it certainly looks like they know their space stuff. star wars in particular. even the toilets are appropriately labelled. and they've built themselves all the things that a serious space company should have, like a mission control room, a model lander that makes smoke, and a simulated lunar surface complete with a rover to go in it. so what do you use to simulate moon dust? you could go to an expensive lab and try to buy lunar simulant, we just went to a stone quarry and asked them to give us the milling output. that's what this is — about 150 microns. it has electrostati

laughs welcome to the earthbound hq of team indus, one of the handful of start—ups competing for thenar xprize, that's $20 million for the first commercial company to land a rover on the moon. december, 2017, blast off. the team indus space craft goes into two days of earth orbit and then, boom, 4.5 days to the moon. 12 days of spiralling down to the surface and, if all goes well, out comes the rover, travels half a kilometre, sends back hd video and wins the prize. what could possibly go wrong? rahul narayan is the co—founder of team indus and has been here since the start of the project, way back in 2010. at that point you had no idea how you would acheive it? yes, i googled it and figured out what wikipedia had to say about landing on the mood. you did an internet search on how to land on the moon? absolutely. laughs did it have any useful information? yes. it said there had been 85 attempts and i think every second attempt failed to the moon. six years later, there are about 100 people working very hard here and it certainly looks like they know their space stuff. star wars in pa

there is a word here in india that i think describes team indus's low—cost, make do approach.s as much as is physically possible. built by workers who flocked to the city over hundreds of years, some of the houses here date back to the 18405. up ahead, there is a pile of shredded denim which they use for fuel. they burn it to fuel the kilns, just like they burn a lot of stuff forfuel here. and there is smoke everywhere here. you can really tell the air quality is very poor. you just have to take a few lungfuls and it starts to burn the back of your throat, it makes your eyes sting. the smoke is a necessary evil for the people of dharavi. like most of the developing world, pollution has been the price india is paying for a booming economy. the smog that gives mumbai its spectacular sunsets has also made it the fifth most polluted mega city in the world. and when the sun disappears before it hits the horizon, you can well believe it. in november, 2016, the indian government declared the air pollution in delhi a national emergency, with harmful pollutants more than 16 times the s

the thing that's interesting about the competition is this is team indus out of india.o launch and they're both going to share that and share the spacecraft that's going to land on the moon and have a race to do the 500 meters. >> they're not going to go at it right here in the studio or anything like that? seems like that television show i've seen. when is the deadline for these entries to be finalized and submitted? >> the deadline is march 31st at midnight of 2018. that's when the competition will officially end. >> as a kid who was a complete space geek, i love this. i really do. >> exciting stuff, isn't it? >> it's fantastic. marcus, good to see you. >> thank you. >> and congratulations to the teams that have come this far. and again, you can learn more about these projects in the new space issue of "national geographic." >>> up next, back-to-school breakfast and even some lunch ideas that are easy to make. your kids are going to love these. but first, this is "today" on nbc. these. first this, is "today" on nbc. ♪ ♪ hey, is this our turn? honey...our turn? yeah, w