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Update: On 19 June Planetary Resources reached its Kickstarter goal of raising $1聽million and is now committed to launching the Arkyd 100 space telescope. The company has announced a secondary goal: if it can raise another $1聽million before the campaign ends on 30聽June, it will upgrade the telescope鈥檚 design to also .

Original article, published 30 May 2013

Want to take a closer look at the moon, or spy on your favourite nebula? Here鈥檚 your chance. For a few hundred dollars, you can take control of the Arkyd 100, the first crowdfunded space telescope, to be built by private would-be asteroid-mining firm .

Today the company, based in Bellevue, Washington, announced a that aims to raise $1 million to launch the orbiting observatory. If they are successful, the telescope could fly by early 2015.

Backers who give $200 or more will get 30 minutes of observing time and will be able to choose their target. The resulting digital picture will be theirs to keep and analyse for possible scientific value.

Space selfie

Lower-budget options will allow backers to donate observing time to students or scientists. Or they may elect to take a 鈥渟pace selfie鈥�. This would involve sending a digital photo into orbit and having it displayed on a screen on the telescope鈥檚 back while an externally mounted camera photographs the screen, with the telescope and the Earth below, all in one frame.

Planetary Resources is not relying on public donations for its main business plan, which involves launching a fleet of small, cheap telescopes that can seek out asteroids rich in precious metals, and then sending robotic spacecraft to mine them. Those telescopes will be funded by the company鈥檚 billionaire investors.

The crowdfunded version is instead part of the firm鈥檚 overarching goal to transform the way small-scale space science is done.

鈥淲e have the potential to change the course of research and exploration,鈥� said Planetary Resources co-founder Peter Diamandis in a press conference today at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. 鈥淚magine a future in which you don鈥檛 have to wait for the government or Congress to decide whether or not this portion of the budget goes to science鈥� in which the public funds and does the research itself. It鈥檚 a beautiful future that we can start right here, right now.鈥�

The Kickstarter campaign had garnered more than $200,000 by the end of its first day.

Good fun

The Arkyd 100鈥檚 chief advantage over existing amateur telescopes is that it will be in space, making it immune to weather, daylight and blurring due to atmospheric distortions. It will also be able to be redirected quickly to watch sudden and short-lived events, like a comet coming near Earth or an object hitting Jupiter.

If it flies, the telescope is expected to last for three years, and all its observing time may be booked by the end of the Kickstarter campaign. If there鈥檚 enough interest, says Diamandis, we鈥檒l build another one.

The telescope鈥檚 aperture is only 200 millimetres across. Because it is so small, and because it will move around from object to object all the time, it probably will not make many new discoveries, says of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, who donated to the project.鈥漇cientifically speaking it鈥檚 not such a big deal, but it鈥檚 a good project for fun,鈥� he says.

Amateur astronomer Christopher Go in Cebu, the Philippines, who has helped NASA record atmospheric changes on Jupiter, agrees. 鈥淚 know it will be more expensive, but a telescope of at least 600 millimetres would be more appropriate,鈥� he says.

Citizen science

While this particular telescope may be mostly for public engagement, Diamandis and others see it as a model for how scientific satellites may work in future.

Previous citizen science projects, such as Galaxy Zoo and its sister projects in the 鈥溾��, have built up communities of hundreds of thousands of enthusiasts who help solve research problems that remain difficult for computers. If each of those people gave $100, they could build a telescope like the Arkyd 100 without needing to appeal to an organisation like NASA, says Diamandis.

鈥淵ou can have groups of hundreds of thousands of people make that happen,鈥� he says. 鈥淎nd those groups of individuals will be willing to take much more risks than the government will.鈥� Once you have built that community, they can help with future aspects of the project: data analysis, writing software, designing upgrades, and even funding the next space telescope.

Folding stuff

That鈥檚 what Marchis is hoping for. He is working on a proposal for a fleet of small satellites called Origami, which would be similar to Arkyd 100 in size and mass. But instead of taking hundreds of unrelated snapshots, they would do one project at a time, like track comets and asteroids or search for planets around small, cool stars.

鈥淎s a citizen, I participated because I think it鈥檚 cool,鈥� Marchis says. 鈥淎s a scientist, I participated because I want to get some feedback. I鈥檓 hoping to get some details about the technology as well.鈥�

of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who is working on miniature satellites called CubeSats to hunt extrasolar planets, is optimistic about crowdfunded astronomy. 鈥淚f this works, it could potentially be a model for real research telescopes in the future,鈥� she says. 鈥淲e鈥檙e all cash-starved.鈥�