A new space start-up company being backed by execs from Google is offering supporters a chance to wow their friends with a photo opportunity that’s quite literally out of this world.
Planetary Resources of Bellevue, Washington launched a
crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter this week in order to bring
in the money necessary to launch ARKYD, an orbiting telescope
that will take custom photos for those willing to open up their
wallets.
The company got off the ground last year and previously announced
plans to capture asteroids flying through space with hopes of
mining the rocks for precious metals and water — that’s why the
telescopes were originally designed. Now Planetary Resources is
exploring other endeavors, and wants to bring the public a
telescope project that can do more than just mine for minerals in
space.
"All we are asking is for the public to tell us that they want
something," company co-founder Eric Anderson said during a
press conference on Wednesday, Reuters reported.
"We're not going to spend our time and resources to do
something if people don't want it and really the only way to
prove that it's something people want is to ask them for
money," he said.
The company hopes to raise one million dollars by the end of
June, and is providing donors with an unusual incentive: for $25,
a support is sent an image of their choice taken miles above the
Earth.
“At its core, the ARKYD is a space telescope. The large, main
optic is designed to take high-resolution photos of objects in
space. What truly sets it apart is that we’ve engineered the
spacecraft with an external screen and a camera arm, allowing us
to take pictures of the ARKYD as it orbits Earth,” explains
the company.
“Your photo (or graphic!) will be displayed on the satellite’s
external screen overlooking Earth. We will then take a picture
from our camera arm and send the image back to you.”
Planetary Resources is calling the option a “Space Selfie,” and
thousands of people have already forked over the money to make it
happen.
"I want to see a selfie in space," Planetary Resources’
president and chief engineer, Chris Lewicki, said during a
Wednesday press conference.
That’s just what $25 will earn a donor though. Other options
include having a video displayed on the telescope’s screen or
supplying schools with exclusive time to peer into space using
the satellite’s lenses.
"If we're successful, we'll go off and create the material we
need to do this public activity and make it happen," Lewicki
added to NBC News.
Two hours after the project went public on Wednesday, Project
Resources received more than $100,000 in donations. Twenty-four
hours later, the telescope was just short of the halfway point to
raising its one
million dollar goal.
"[W]e had an extraordinary response .... Tens of thousands of
people contacted us and wanted to be involved," founder Peter
Diamandis said. "We are using this Kickstarter campaign as a
mechanism to engage the
community in a productive way."
The company hopes to launch their first ARKYD, a 33-pound
satellite with a 2-foot wingspan, in the later half of 2015.
Planetary Resources is backed by investments courtesy of Google
CEO Larry Page, Chairman
Eric Schmidt and director James Cameron.