As of today, I’m an official citizen of two nations. One is the US, which has 325 million citizens and an area of almost 10 million sq km. The other is Asgardia, which has some 246,000 citizens, but physically exists for now only in the form of a 6lb (2.7kg) bread-box-size satellite floating in low-Earth orbit since November 2017.

One day, Asgardia plans to have an enormous “space ark” orbiting our home world, a colony on the Moon, and perhaps even further in the future on other “celestial bodies”, according to the constitution.

The nation’s ‘leader’, Igor Raufovich Ashurbeyli, isn’t joking around. According to his CV, the Azerbaijani billionaire has been involved in publishing, telecommunications, science education and in consulting on space threat defence, nanotechnology, and aerospace research. He also rose to become CEO for Almaz-Antey, a large Russian state-owned defense contractor that builds missile systems and other military hardware. After leaving the company, he turned to building cathedrals in Russia.

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And on 25 June in Vienna, Austria, he became Asgardia’s first “Head of Nation”. His face is on the official Asgardia commemorative coin that guests received at the post-inauguration gala dinner.

The inauguration ceremony this night in Vienna’s magnificent baroque Hofburg Palace includes trumpet fanfares, a girl choir singing the new Asgardia national anthem, and a pre-recorded message from a Russian astronaut on the International Space Station. Then Ashurbeyli, bedecked with an emblem on a medieval-style necklace, gives a speech affirming Asgardia’s noble goals of “peace in space and the prevention of Earth's conflicts being transferred into space”.

Afterwards, about 350 guests – citizens, members of parliament, donors, supporters, press and others – are ushered into a huge ornate hall for a three-course dinner. We are entertained by fabulous international musicians and dancers performing everything from classic opera, concerti and ballet, to flamenco, a Japanese folk song and Strauss played on a red electric violin by a strolling musician in thigh-high black boots. These performances were chosen partly to recognize the 12 official languages of Asgardia (English is its working language). Ashurbeyli tells me later that giving the arts a prominent place was important because “weapons divide us and culture unites us”.