Planetary Resources opens up space telescope project to Kickstarter drive

Planetary Resources

Planetary Resources' Arkyd Series 100 spacecraft is also known as the Leo space telescope.

By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

Long before it gets into asteroid mining, Planetary Resources plans to let its supporters use the company's first Arkyd-100 space telescope to make astronomical discoveries or just take orbital "selfies" ? as long as they come up with at least $1 million in Kickstarter pledges.

"If we're successful, we'll go off and create the material we need to do this public activity and make it happen," the venture's president and chief engineer, Chris Lewicki, told NBC News.

The crowdfunding campaign was launched Wednesday at Seattle's Museum of Flight, not far from Planetary Resources' headquarters in suburban Bellevue. Like other Kickstarter projects, this one offers a range of pledge levels, starting at $10 and going up to $10,000.

For $25, you're promised a "space selfie": You can have an image of your choosing displayed on a screen that's installed on the Arkyd-100, and a camera will capture an image of that image with Earth in the background ? then send it back down to you.

For $99, you get the selfie, and you also get to sponsor five minutes of telescope time for students and scientists. For $150, you get to point the telescope yourself, for 30 minutes of exposure time. Higher pledge levels carry the promise of cooler goodies (Your video in space! A whole classroom's worth of telescope observations! Tours! Spacecraft models!).

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653377/s/2c9419f4/l/0Lcosmiclog0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A50C290C18569610A0Eplanetary0Eresources0Eopens0Eup0Espace0Etelescope0Eproject0Eto0Ekickstarter0Edrive0Dlite/story01.htm

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