With 28 hours left, the U.S. Space & Rocket Center has hit its $70,000 funding goal on the STA Indiegogo campaign!

With $69,070 raised, an anonymous contributor made a $1,000 donation to get the campaign across the finish line!

But just because the original goal has been met, don’t believe for one moment that there’s no point in contributing!  Any money above and beyond the $70,000 can be used to help fund further development of the STA display.

There’s still time left to help!

A lot of people have great reason to celebrate!  $70,000 in fewer than 60 days is certainly no small feat!

No doubt Trevor Daniels, the campaign manager, and Charity Stewart, the USSRC’s Social Media Manager, must be feeling particularly gleeful this fine evening!

A great deal of credit certainly belongs to the newly formed Space Camp Alumni Advancement Board.  Without them, this campaign would likely not have happened, and the Shuttle Training Aircraft might possibly be stuck at the Birmingham Airport for several more years!

Additionally, local Huntsville businesses provided support to the campaign and they are certainly due our thanks:

• Gleneagles Family Medicine
• Our Valley Events
• Straight to Ale Brewing Company
• Hall Albright Garrison & Associates
• Huntsville / Madison County Convention & Visitors Bureau
• 4 Site Incorporated
• Geek Out Huntsville

But obviously this couldn’t have happened without the help of the more-than 300 funders!  Well done, all!

The end is so close, in more ways than one.

There are only 3 days left to make a contribution to help land a Shuttle Training Aircraft at the Space & Rocket Center.

The total collected thus far stands at $57,848, a mere $12,152 away from the goal!  We’re almost there, and every little bit helps!

Recently, an exciting new perk was added.

For a $10,000 donation, you can fly with The Man Who’s Flown Everything, Robert “Hoot” Gibson!  That one donation alone, if you have the means, would get the Space Center very nearly to their goal, and provide you the donor with a tremendously exciting, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!

AL.com covered the addition of this new perk as well, and the National Business Aviation Association recently featured a story on efforts to raise the funds.

At the $300 perk level, more astronauts have signed on to sign on!  In addition to the previously mentioned trio of Hoot Gibson, Steven Nagel, and Jim Halsell, L. Blaine Hammond and Owen Garriott will be signing the posters as well!

Three days left!  Please consider donating if you haven’t yet and are able to!

With 12 days left, the Space & Rocket Center’s first crowd funding campaign has surpassed the halfway point, currently standing at $35,851.  The final days shall no doubt be fast and furious, and there’s still time for you to get in on the action!

Take me up on the $5 of the $15 offer.  As of now, an anonymous donor is matching funds, so your $10 ($15 for the keychain, $5 back from me) can turn into $30 for the Space Center!

Go donate now!

You’re of course welcome to donate more, and three new incentive levels have been created:

First, for $75, you can get the STA patch by itself.  While the $250 level previously got you the STA patch and everything from the levels below it, this will get you the patch only.

Second, for $150, you can get the “STA Perk Combo,” netting you your choice of two of the following: STA Keychain, bumper sticker, poster, T-Shirt, or mission patch.

Finally, $300 will get upgrade your STA poster with autographs from various astronauts.  Astronauts Hoot Gibson, Steven Nagel, and Jim Halsell have currently all committed to signing, and more could be added before all is said and done!  Unlike the other two new levels, this $300 level will still get you all incentives less than $300 (but only one STA poster).

And if you’re going to be in the Washington D.C. area on April 24, you should get out to the Space Camp meet-up!  And bring a friend or two!  It will be a grand ol’ time!  Check out the Facebook Event for all of the details!

The 21st annual Great Moonbuggy Race has been rechristened this year as the first annual Human Exploration Rover Challenge.

This event, jointly held by the U.S. Space & Rocket Center and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center has seen several important new changes for this year.

While the moonbuggies previously had to fold up to fit within a 4’x4’x4′ cube, this year has seen the box extended by an extra foot in all directions, to five cubic feet.

An even larger change comes from a ban on inflatable tires.

If you can’t make it out to the Space Center, be sure to check in on the race on MSFC’s UStream channel, and/or follow their twitter feed.

The U.S. Space & Rocket Center is now halfway through their Indiegogo campaign.

Thirty days in, $28,046 has been raised thus far!

The bad news is, this is slightly off pace to meet the $70,000 goal.  The good news is, there’s still an entire month left!

If you have yet to donate, every little bit helps!

Even the $15 keychain level gets us $15 closer!  If just half-of-a-percent of Space Camp alumni went and made a $15 donation, we would have this in the bag!

With a month left to go, please go donate!

In fact, if you donate $15 or more, I will cover $5 of that!  Head on over to the Indiegogo campaign, make your pledge, and shoot me an email with your name and donation amount (so I can verify on the campaign page), and your preferred method for reimbursement (check, Paypal, Square Cash, Dwolla, etc.) and I’ll get you $5!

At $10 for the keychain, that’s really not much more than you would pay for such a thing in the gift shop.  This way, you get to be part of Space Camp’s first ever crowdfunding campaign as well, and help them get the Shuttle Training Aircraft on display!

Space Camp will launch an all new design for their websites complete with brand new content (e.g. produced promotional videos) within the next few weeks!

This move has been in the works for a while, but has become increasingly necessary since the Space Camp / Aviation Challenge websites went down several weeks ago for a period lasting several days.  Since returning online, the site itself seems to have been somewhat stripped down, and not everything is where it ought to be.

For an entertaining jaunt through the history of spacecamp.com, head on over to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine and see their listing of old Space Camp sites.  I’ve always felt the site circa 2004 was pretty shiny!

Though it had to be moved indoors from its planned Shuttle Park location, the press conference held today at Space Camp otherwise went off without a hitch.

U.S. Space & Rocket Center CEO Deborah Barnhart, Alabama Space Science Exhibit Commission Chair Col. Roosevelt Lewis (Ret.), Space Camp Alumni Advisory Board Chair John Ramsey, and Astronaut Col. Jim Halsell (Ret.) spoke today about the effort to bring the Shuttle Training Aircraft to the Space & Rocket Center, amongst other highlights at the Center.

Dr. Barnhart asked supporters, in honor of the Center’s 44th birthday, to donate forty-four dollars to the STA Indiegogo campaign.  A new incentive was also issued today at the $44 level as well.

The event today was covered at al.com, WHNT 19, and WAFF 48.  All have different pieces of footage and interviews that are worth checking out.

The entirety of the press conference is also up on the Hab1 YouTube page in its entirety.

Robert Pearlman, editor of collectSPACE, wrote up a nice piece when the campaign started that’s worth a look as well.  Space.com even picked it up, hopefully providing even more exposure!

As of this writing, 71 contributors have donated $22,000 towards the $70,000 goal.  It should be noted that, unlike many crowd-funding campaigns, this is not an all-or-nothing campaign.  Should the Space & Rocket Center fail to raise the $70,000 they’re looking for, they will still have gotten off to a very nice start!

The campaign is only nearing the end of its second week though and has been making steady progress throughout that time.  The Rocket Center is on track to exceed the $70,000 goal if donations continue in at the current rate!