A startup promising to put a camera on the International Space Station surpassed its $100,000 funding goal on Kickstarter. At the time of this writing there is a little more than a day of fundraising remaining.
The project is the second attempt by SpaceVR to raise money for its goal after an earlier project aiming to raise $500,000 was canceled after only $42,000 was pledged. The first project only received about 500 backers while the new project has seen more than 1,200 people put their money behind the idea. The company plans to use a GoPro rig to shoot footage on the International Space Station. The rig is called “Overview One” and the people behind SpaceVR plan to return “raw video on SD cards which can be returned to Earth in a SpaceX Dragon capsule. The raw video can then be stitched into a VR video on the ground.” $100,000 is said to cover “flight certification, launch costs, and 2D 16K resolution footage that will be physically down-massed (returned from space) to Earth 2x per year.”
SpaceVR claims “astronauts will turn on the camera and begin to capture footage from the space station” and that “we have set up all the partnerships and the agreements.” They also specify they are “not endorsed by or associated with NASA.” I reached out to NASA to see if they need an agreement to get a camera onto the ISS and if they have such an arrangement. I’ll update this post if I get an answer.
