Asgardia, formally called the space Kingdom of Asgardia may be a proposal for nation declared on October 12, 2016, by Dr Igor Ashurbeyli, the founding father of the Aerospace International Research Centre and Chairman of UNESCO’s Science of Space Committee. The planned nation intends to promote peace and collaboration as humankind expands into space and ultimately aims to be recognized as a nation-state. The draft constitution declares Asgardia to be a Constitutional autocracy with Dr Igor Ashurbeyli the primary Head of State. The draft constitution permits Asgardia to form laws that are lawfully binding on its voters.

Named after a Norse mythological town of the skies, Asgardia is open to all residents on planet earth and it does not cost something to affix. Russian man of science Dr Igor Ashurbeyli declared his plans to make the world’s 1st independent nation that operates in space in Oct 2016. Since then, many thousands of individuals have signed up to be citizens. Ashurbeyli says the project’s mission is to produce a “peaceful society”, provide easier access to space technologies, and defend Earth from space threats, like asteroids and semisynthetic junk in space. But there is a catch.

Rather than residing in space, Asgardia’s citizens will — for the present — stay based on earth. Asgardia would be a nation in space, in low-Earth orbit, or beyond, the project leaders said. The Asgardia project team said they think they need at least tens of thousands of citizens before they formally apply to the U.N. for recognition (although there are 14 countries in the world with fewer than 100,000 citizensAsgardian

“If you look at a nation’s population, statistically, 2 percent of the population are creative and productive and progressive, so we hope that looking at the population of Earth, 7.5 billion, we are hoping that 150 million would be those creative progressive people [who become Asgardians],” Ashurbeyli told Space.com.

During a conference in Hong Kong on June 13, 2016, Asgardia’s founder, Igor Ashurbeyli, disclosed concrete details regarding the satellite: Asgardia-1 is going to be deployed from Orbital ATK’s Cygnus OA-8 resupply space vehicle launching in September 2017. The satellite is 10 x 20 x 20 centimetres (3.9 x 7.9 x 7.9 inches) and has eight batteries and 4 deployable solar arrays. it’ll orbit at up to 500 kilometres (310 miles) on top of Earth. Texas-based space-services firm NanoRacks acts as the satellite’s prime contractor and operator.

During the conference, Ashurbeyli also described plans for a space station and moon colony.

“We plan to have this station in space and on the moon,” he said. “It will be a four-level orbital station. I think the technical details will be defined by the Ministry of Science, which I hope we will have in the autumn of this year.”

Ashurbeyli said Asgardia’s 1st satellite would be launched from one of the spacefaring nations, however, the launching state (the country which will acquire the launch) would be a country with a rising economy that’s not a signatory to the space written agreement. The project team views partnering with a developing country as some way to get countries involved that haven’t previously had access to space. The Outer Space Treaty (OST) is an international agreement made during the Cold War in 1967 and assumes all activity in space will be led by a nation-state.

Ashurbeiylj said he views the OST as restrictive, with its state actors-led approach. Ashurbeyli wants private individuals and companies to be able to act in space without direct government involvement. The OST also says that no nation-state can own territory in outer space and signatories are obliged to follow this. Partnering with a non-signatory nation would avoid such legal complications with regard to exploiting space resources, he said. Non-OST signatory African countries ─ Ethiopia and Kenya, in particular, ─ are seen as potential candidates for the satellite’s launching state.

The Asgardia project team also has plans for satellites that would protect the Earth from asteroids and space debris. Asgardia project team member, Joseph Pelton, who is the director emeritus of the Space & Advanced Communications Research Institute at George Washington University, told Space.com after the news conference that the defence of the Earth would require different spacecraft. More than 500,000 individuals applied for Asgardian citizenship on-line within twenty days when the project was declared in October last year.

The organizers removed ineligible individuals, like youngsters, and we’re left with nearly 200,000 individuals from regarding two hundred countries. (Now, the website lists over 250,000.) The approved candidates have each received personal certificates of Asgardia and might vote to approve the lawyer-designed constitution on June 18. The constitution was revealed on June 13. [Incredible Technology: the way to Build an area Station Colony] Of the citizenship candidates, 80 % are men, and therefore the largest demographic includes 18- to 35-year-olds. while there are candidates from nearly every country on Earth, China has the foremost candidates, followed by Turkey, then the United States then Italy. individuals can register as prospective Asgardians on the website.

“Sixty years after the launch of the first-ever artificial satellite, Sputnik, our own space satellite, Asgardia-1, will mark the beginning of a new space era, taking our citizens into space in virtual form, at first,” Ashurbeyli said.

While the project’s proposals remain vague, the vision for Asgardia is lofty. The team says that one of their early plans is to create “a state-of-the-art protective shield for all humankind from cosmic, manmade and natural threats to life on earth.” Such threats, they say, include the dangers posed by space junk, and even asteroids. But, at present, details remain hazy about what form such a shield could take.

And while the project does not currently include plans to set up an Asgardian settlement in space, Ashurbeyli believes life beyond Earth will be vital to the future of humankind. “We are laying the foundations to make that possible in the distant future,” he said.

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