ARKYD space telescope Kickstarter passes $1M goal

The Planetary Resources Kickstarter campaign for the ARKYD public access space telescope surpassed the $1,000,000 goal today. At the moment, they have 11,356 backers, with $1,003,126 pledged and 11 days to go.

Just yesterday (see post  here) they had $916,582 after about 20 days of fundraising. It was starting to look like the pledges had leveled off and they might have trouble reaching $1M. When I saw the total this evening, I first thought that a single person might have given them a boost but the number of backers had also jumped from about 100 per day to over 700 today as seen in the charts at ARKYD – Kicktraq.

They also introduced new Add-ons and a new mystery stretch goal for $1.5M:

New $1.5M Mystery Stretch Goal Revealed!
When we reach $1.5 Million in pledges, every selfie pledge or higher will receive an exclusive digital Beta-Selfie, taken next year during the crucial integration phase of spacecraft build! Become a part of the build and catch a glimpse of our clean-room squad in action!

Update: Here is an update and video from PR:

Many of you have just crowdfunded a space telescope, bringing space within reach for everyone!  You know who you are – THANK YOU!!!  We passed our $1M campaign funding goal today and are now on the way to our $2M stretch goal of searching for Alien Planets.  Help us get there.

We passed 11,000 backers while I was live on-air with Leo at Twit.tv / Triangulation, and thanks to The Oatmeal’s pledge and fan support, we’re accelerating towards an exciting final 10 days of the campaign!

Time is running out to join the community that is democratizing space exploration and sharing it with the world.  Make your pledge!  This is only the start of something REALLY BIG.

There’s a ton of new stuff over on our Kickstarter page, including live events next week with Rainn Wilson (Dwight Schrute), Seth Green and Hank Green, Richard Garriott (Lord British) and Jon Mavor (Planetary Annihilation), add-on pledge levels, new stretch goals, and our main Kickstarter video translated into more than a dozen languages, including Klingon.