{"id":19700,"date":"2013-06-11T23:13:06","date_gmt":"2013-06-11T15:13:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/with-2m-in-kickstarter-funds-asteroid-mining-companys-public-telescope-could-find-alien-planets\/"},"modified":"2013-06-11T23:13:06","modified_gmt":"2013-06-11T15:13:06","slug":"with-2m-in-kickstarter-funds-asteroid-mining-companys-public-telescope-could-find-alien-planets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/with-2m-in-kickstarter-funds-asteroid-mining-companys-public-telescope-could-find-alien-planets\/","title":{"rendered":"With $2M in Kickstarter funds, asteroid-mining company\u2019s public telescope could find alien planets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-100938\" alt=\"planetaryresourcesaliens\" src=\"https:\/\/www.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/planetaryresourcesaliens.jpg\" width=\"558\" height=\"405\">It ain\u2019t Kepler, but an upgrade to Planetary Resources\u2019 crowdfunded public telescope could hunt for alien planets.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-100063\" alt=\"planetaryarkyd\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/planetaryarkyd.png\" width=\"273\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/planetaryarkyd.png 438w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/planetaryarkyd-274x300.png 274w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/planetaryarkyd-200x219.png 200w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/planetaryarkyd-91x100.png 91w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 273px) 100vw, 273px\">The Bellevue-based asteroid-mining company announced new Kickstarter stretch goals in its campaign to produce the&nbsp;world\u2019s first crowdfunded, public use space telescope.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">After two weeks, funding sits about $140,000 shy of the original $1 million goal. With 19 days to go, that will likely be eclipsed, but Planetary has other ideas past that.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">If funding reaches $2 million, the company will enable&nbsp;its&nbsp;Arkyd-100&nbsp;telescope the ability to search for extrasolar planets, or \u201cexoplanets\u201d \u2014 in other words, alien worlds. The add-ons would improve the telescope\u2019s stability systems and allow for exoplanet transit detection capability.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The Arkyd would use two methods to do this:&nbsp;Transiting, which detects new planets by seeing a star\u2019s brightness dim when a planet passes in front of it, or gravitational microlensing, a term used for when gravity from a planet distorts light waves from the stars behind it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">\u201cWhile the Arkyd won\u2019t rival NASA\u2019s $600 million Kepler spacecraft, which may have to end its mission due to a recent equipment failure, the enhanced Arkyd will be a huge step toward important new scientific discoveries enabled by citizen scientists,\u201d said Planetary President Chris Lewicki in a press release.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Planetary also has a stretch goal of $1.3 million, and if met, the company will build a ground station that would double the download speed of data exchange for photos taken by the telescope.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Check out the&nbsp;Kickstarter page&nbsp;for more info.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/1458134548\/arkyd-a-space-telescope-for-everyone-0\/widget\/video.html\" height=\"360\" width=\"480\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Previously on GeekWire: Q&amp;A: Bill Nye on Superman\u2019s beard, space, education and a possible \u2018Science Guy\u2019 return<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It ain\u2019t Kepler, but an upgrade to Planetary Resources\u2019 crowdfunded public telescope could hunt for alien planets. The Bellevue-based asteroid-mining company announced new Kickstarter stretch goals in its campaign to produce the&nbsp;world\u2019s first crowdfunded, public use space telescope. After two weeks, funding sits about $140,000 shy of the original $1 million goal. With 19 days [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5655,2826,367,4820,4465],"class_list":["post-19700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-arykd","tag-kepler","tag-mars","tag-planetary-resources","tag-travel"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19700"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19700\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}