Citizen Science and Space Exploration at MakerCon

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., April 23, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Citizens in Space, a project of the United States Rocket Academy, has joined the lineup for MakerCon, which takes place at the Oracle Conference Center in Redwood City on May 13-14, 2014.

MakerCon is a premiere event organized by Maker Media, publisher of Make magazine and producer of Maker Faire. MakerCon brings together the leaders at the forefront of the maker movement. The conference provides new insights into local and global manufacturing, design, marketing and distribution, and diverse funding options to help makers bring their products to market.

Edward Wright, founder of the United States Rocket Academy and program manager for Citizens in Space, will speak on "Citizen Science and Citizen Space Exploration." Citizens in Space has acquired a contract for 10 flights on the Lynx spacecraft, which is currently under construction by XCOR Aerospace in Mojave, California. Wright will discuss opportunities for makers to fly experiments through Citizens in Space and opportunities for citizen astronauts to fly as payload operators.

"New vehicles like the XCOR Lynx will dramatically reduce the cost of access to space," Wright said. "And low-cost access will revolutionize the way people use space. Everyone in the professional maker community needs to think about how space fits into their business plans."

Other featured speakers at MakerCon include Carl Bass, CEO of Autodesk; Massimo Banzi, co-founder of Arduino; Brook Drumm, co-founder and CEO at Printrbot; Eric Klein, partner at Lemnos Labs; Peter Hirshberg, CEO of The Re:imagine Group; Connie Hu, CEO of ArcBotics; Kevin Kelly, founding executive editor of Wired and founder of Cool Tools; Jason Kessler, Asteroid Grand Challenge Program Executive at NASA; Eric Pan, founder and CEO of Seeed Studios; Jose Gomez-Marquez, principal medical device designer at MIT's Little Devices Lab; Brian David Johnson, futurist at Intel; Mickey McManus, CEO of MAYA Design; Edward Screven, chief corporate architect at Oracle; Yancey Strickler, co-founder and CEO of Kickstarter; and Leon Wong, director of market strategy at Xerox PARC.

MakerCon is presented by Intel and hosted by Oracle Corporation.

More information, including a complete list of speakers, is available at www.makercon.com. Registration is available at www.makercon.com/attend. Early-bird registration rates expire on April 27.

Additional information about Citizens in Space can be found at www.citizensinspace.org.

Media Contacts:

Edward Wright

Email

Lt. Col. Steve Heck (USAF-ret.)

(513) 607-8152

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SOURCE Citizens in Space