Made-in-India Moon and Mars test soil, plus a dust bay to try hardware in it
TL;DR Moonsoil makes graded lunar and Martian regolith simulants in India and rents a dust test bay where teams can drive wheels, run drills and sinter bricks in them. Indian space startups and university labs pay per kilogram and per test day. It's the ground floor of space mining, years before anything gets mined.
Every rover, lander leg and brick-printing experiment has to be tested in something that behaves like Moon or Mars soil. Real samples aren't for sale, so teams use simulants.
When ISRO needed them for Chandrayaan, NASA charged $150 a kilogram (about ₹14,500), and importing tonnes would have added ₹40–50 Cr to project costs[1]. ISRO solved its own problem with rock quarried in two Tamil Nadu villages[1].
Everyone else still has a gap. An IISc team that made "space bricks" used ISRO's lunar simulant but had to bring its Martian simulant from a Florida lab[2]. A private company or college building surface hardware has no Indian supplier to call.
The seed pitched mining asteroids to make space access cheaper. Nobody can run that as a business today, and it would need launches and flight hardware an early Indian company cannot fund. So I kept the goal and moved the work to the ground, where the near-term buyers are.
Moonsoil sources and crushes Indian anorthosite and basalt, then sieves and blends them into a few documented grades - lunar highland, lunar mare, a fine dust grade and a basic Mars blend. Every batch ships with a datasheet covering particle size, mineral makeup and bulk density, tested by an outside lab.
The second product is a test bay with a regolith bin for wheel and drill trials, a small dust chamber for seals and connectors, and bench space for sintering and brick experiments. Customers book by the day and get a short test report.
India's 2023 space policy explicitly lets private companies recover and sell space resources[3]. Moonsoil builds the know-how and customer base for that future while earning from Earth-side work now.
The buyers are people who break hardware on dust - space startups building rovers, landers, robotic arms and surface payloads, and university labs working on construction materials, dust mitigation and ISRU chemistry. Both currently import. The best-known US supplier lists its lunar highland and mare simulants at US$45 per product, its dust grades at US$65 and a bulk simplified grade at US$25[4], before freight and customs. Test-bay days would be priced against a team building its own regolith bin, which is my assumption to test.
ISRO's stated goals now include a Bharatiya Antariksh Station by 2035 and a crewed Indian Moon landing by 2040[5]. The 2023 space policy names in-situ resource use as an ISRO study area and lets non-government companies own and sell recovered space material[3]. Startups and colleges are already flying their own hardware, and some of it will need to touch a surface.
There's no public figure for the simulant or ISRU test market, in India or anywhere else. The firmest numbers are ISRO's own - almost 50 tonnes of Tamil Nadu soil now sits in Bengaluru for lander and rover tests, after imports were priced at $150 a kilogram[1].
That's one buyer's lifetime need, not a recurring market, so plan for small, steady orders.
A US university spinout sells simulants and educational kits worldwide[4]. Another US firm sells lunar and Mars simulants, makes icy polar blends and tests how dust attacks seals and connectors[6]. ISRO has its own simulant for in-house use[1].
I found no Indian company selling simulant or renting a dust test bay to outside teams, and that's the gap.
| Difficulty | Hard (52/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹1.2–2.4 Cr |
| Time to launch | 9–15 months |
Crushing rock is easy. Proving your simulant matches the Moon on the properties that matter, batch after batch, is not, and buyers will check. You also need geology and planetary-science credibility, a quarry partner with clean permissions and the patience to sell to a small number of very technical buyers.
Ground work needs no space licence. Simulant and test-bay work sits outside IN-SPACe authorisation, which only comes in if you later fly a payload[3].
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
AI shouldn't certify a simulant's mineral makeup. That comes from an outside lab test, and the datasheet should say so.
Want to work out the AI layer for Moonsoil? Talk to Yash →
Here's what can go south -
I'd back a geologist or materials scientist with ties to the planetary-science community who's happy running a specialist lab business. If you're expecting space-mining-sized returns soon then this is the wrong bet.
Prove first that ten Indian teams will pay for simulant and test days within a year, and that one foreign lab will buy an Indian grade.
Expect roughly ₹1.2–2.4 Cr, covering crushing and sieving kit, the test bay and outside lab testing.
It's a small specialist market, so profit depends on repeat buyers. Prove ten Indian teams will pay within a year before you scale.
Yes, if you have suitable rock nearby and a quarry partner. Check local mining, dust and export rules first.
The free Moonsoil validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the space-policy and quarrying checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for hardware teams and labs, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Moonsoil or something close to it? The make-or-break work is proving batch-to-batch consistency and finding enough repeat buyers, and I can help you test both before you buy a crusher. If you need a hand, you know where to find me. Talk to Yash →
For illustration only. Names are fictional and ideas hypothetical; sourced facts are real but may be out of date. Nothing here is legal, financial or professional advice, and Yash Khatri is not personally liable for any use of it. Read the full disclaimer.