NASA
The Space Kingdom of Asgardia has launched its first satellite. This so-called ‘virtual nation’ is the pet project of Russian scientist and billionaire Igor Ashurbeyli. Last year, he proposed a new nation which would be based in space in order to be outside of the control of nations on Earth.
The Asgardia-1 satellite, which is about the size of a loaf of bread, launched on 12 November and contains half a terabyte of data. It holds the foundations of the project – the nation’s constitution, its national symbols, and data from its 115,000 citizens. It was launched from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia aboard a Cygnus spacecraft on an Orbital ATK Antares rocket.
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The Cygnus craft will dock with the International Space Station on 14 November to perform its primary mission of delivering supplies to the astronauts there. After about a month, it will undock and fly higher above Earth, where it will release Asgardia’s satellite into orbit.
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While Ashurbeyli has plans to convince the UN to recognise Asgardia as a sovereign nation and someday build Asgardian colonies in space, it is not currently recognised as a nation by any country on Earth. For now, the only benefit offered to citizens of the space nation is the ability to upload data to Asgardia-1 in orbit.
Time will tell whether the Space Kingdom of Asgardia becomes the first space-based nation or whether it will remain simply an orbiting external hard drive.
Read more: Orbiting ‘space nation’ data centre could avoid all Earthly laws
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