jtotheizzoe:

A Telescope For the People, By The People
Check out Planetary Resources, Inc. (the folks behind that super-cool asteroid mining venture!) and their newly announced project to crowdfund a space telescope. This small (8&rdquo;) scope will be a fully functional eye on the cosmos, and Planetary Resources is asking for your help to get it built. Check out their Kickstarter page to donate!
What&rsquo;s the benefit of donating? If you give more than $25, you get your picture projected on a tiny screen in front of the telescope, and a keepsake photo of you with the Earth in the background. That definitely beats that Instagram you took this weekend! Even better, classrooms and scientists will be able to buy time on the telescope to look at, well, whatever they want to!
I suspect they won&rsquo;t have any trouble reaching their goal of $1 million. We are on the brink of some amazing new adventures in private space missions, and this is an inspiring sign of things to come.
Phil Plait has more coverage here, and here&rsquo;s Bill Nye and PRI&rsquo;s Peter Diamandis talking about the Arkyd 100:

Keep looking up!
