Instagram with video? That's old news. How about taking a picture of yourself in orbit, with the entire Earth as your backdrop?
That will be possible in the next few years, now that the Arkyd Space Telescope has met the $1 million goal on Kickstarter that it announced last month. The Arkyd is the brainchild of Planetary Resources, an asteroid mining company launched last year with backing from a handful of Google and Microsoft billionaires.
The Arkyd is set to be launched around 2015, on a mission of hunting for viable asteroids to mine for trillions of dollars in minerals; it already had funding for the launch part.
The Kickstarter campaign opens the telescope up to the public to point wherever they want (except right at the sun) and to load pictures on the onboard screen. (See Grumpy Cat above for an example.)
"We did not anticipate the level of interest and enthusiasm when we founded the company," explained Chris Lewicki, the president of Planetary Resources and former NASA Mars Rover engineer. "We wanted to respond to that in a way that takes everyone along for the trip ... it's really self-funding."
For a $25 contribution, you'll get a digital space selfie emailed to you once the telescope is up and has worked its way through the queue to your spot. More money gets you a higher resolution shot, prints of the image and the ability to move the satellite.
The Kickstarter has more than 12,000 backers, with 10 days still left to go. You won't be alone in owning a space selfie if you back it, but you may be the first on your block. And if you're interested in the hunt for extra-terrestrial planets, the company has announced it will devote telescope time to that if the Kickstarter total hits $2 million.
Beyond that, Lewicki is bursting with ideas for ways to keep people involved in the asteroid hunting mission. For example, you may be able to take a space selfie on future prospecting crafts once they dock with a space-bound rock -- is probably the next-best thing to staking your own claim to it.
"We could do something more significant and take along mementos," Lewicki said.
You also may have noticed the tiny R2-D2 on the satellite mock-up above: Lewicki and his Planetary Resources cohorts are proud Star Wars geeks. Indeed, the Arkyd itself is named for the fictional factory that created the probe droids seen at the opening of The Empire Strikes Back.
Not only are the geeks inheriting the Earth, then -- it looks like they're taking over space, too.