Asgardia: the world’s first space nation

Coming soon: a nation in space for humans.

Named after a Norse mythological city of the skies, Asgardia is open to all residents on planet earth and it doesn’t cost anything to join.

Russian scientist Dr Igor Ashurbeyli announced his plans to form the world’s first independent nation that operates in outer space in October 2016. Since then, hundreds of thousands of people have signed up to be citizens.

Ashurbeyli says the project’s mission is to provide a “peaceful society”, offer easier access to space technologies, and protect Earth from space threats, such as asteroids and man-made debris in space.

But there’s a catch.

Rather than residing in outer space, Asgardia’s citizens will – for the time being – remain based on earth.

Getting it off the ground

Within 40 hours of the project being announced, over 100,000 people applied for citizenship on Asgardia’s website.

After three weeks, Asgardia had 500,000 applicants.

Anyone over 18 and with an email address, regardless of gender, nationality, race, religion, and financial standing was able to sign up – including ex-convicts, provided they are clear of charges at the time of application.

Deluged, Ashurbeyli introduced a stronger verification process asking for additional details such as date of birth and address. Subsequently, the number of citizens has reduced.

Today there are about 211,000 members from 217 countries with the majority being aged between 18 and 35 years old.

There are over 130,000 English speakers, but China has the largest number of Asgardians with 28,000 of its citizens having signed up.

The gender balance – or imbalance – is 83% male to 16% female with the remaining people identifying as “other”.

Rayven Sin, an artist based in Hong Kong, told CNN that she signed up to become an Asgardian in November 2016 after hearing about it on a Chinese radio show while she was in Toronto.

“I really want to be able to see if human beings are able to have more opportunity to express their opinions,” she told CNN. “The society we live in now – everything seems to be either capitalism or communism – there’s a lot of conflict.

“As a human being, I would hope (to see) if we could have other ways (of living). For a better life, and for more options.”

John Spiro, a digital marketing specialist who organizes a monthly meet-up for Hong Kong-based Asgardians, told CNN it was the possibility of sending personal data into space that excited him.

“I help translate and preserve Buddhist sutras as a hobby and the symbolism of sending one of those religious texts in electronic form ‘up to the heavens’ seemed very nice.”

Out of this world idea

Asgardia will establish a physical presence in space via a series of satellites, the first of which, the Asgardia-1, will be launched into orbit around the Earth on September 12, 2017, Ashurbeyli revealed at a press conference in Hong Kong this month.

It will travel aboard Orbital ATK’s mission to the International Space Station (ISS), and be released from the American aerospace firm’s ship once it docks at the ISS.

The nano satellite, or “nanosat”, is small – about the size of a loaf of bread – and weighs just 6 pounds (2.8 kilograms), but it packs a punch in terms of storage, holding 300 kilobytes of data per person for the first 100,000 citizens who signed up.

After that, 200 kilobytes will be offered to the next 400,000 people, and 100 kilobytes thereafter for one million citizens.

The data will include things like family photos, Ashurbeyli explained.

Going forward, the Asgardia team hopes to create habitable platforms in low-earth orbits – the first 100 to 200 miles (161 to 321 kilometers) from space, which is also where the ISS is located.

The first human flight to this location is projected to take place in eight years’ time.

“We want to give equal opportunities to everyone who has a mind, who can do something, for their protection,” Ashurbeyli told CNN.

“Our real home is not the house or the city where we were born. (Our) home is planet Earth, (and) we want to protect it.

“(It’s) not a fantasy. Going to Mars, the galactics, so on – that’s just fake. I intend something more real.”

Rocket scientist

A 53-year-old rocket scientist, Ashurbeyli says he is single-handedly bankrolling the project – for a sum that’s undisclosed.

Regularly reported to be a billionaire – although he has never appeared on the Forbes rich lists – the Azerbaijan-born Russian graduated from the Azerbaijan State Oil Academy in 1985, and three years later founded Socium, a software and consulting firm turned holding company with over 10,000 employees, according to his website.

After moving to Moscow in the 1990s, he became a heavyweight in the science industry and, in 2010, was awarded the Russian State Science and Technology Prize. Three years later, he founded the Aerospace International Research Center (AIRC) in Vienna, and today he is chairman of UNESCO’s Science of Space committee.

In short, Ashurbeyli is no beginner when it comes to space.

He did, however, resign from all governmental organizations in 2011, according to his website, and now claims to be politically neutral.

Two new missions to Venus -- DAVINCI+ and VERITAS -- have been selected by NASA. These missions will shed light on how Venus became the inhospitable world it is today, despite the fact that it shares many characteristics with Earth.

This illustration shows the position of NASA's Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes outside the heliosphere, a protective bubble created by the sun that extends well past the orbit of Pluto.

Caltech

SPHEREx, the Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer, will study the beginning and evolution of the universe and determine how common the ingredients for life are within the planetary systems found in our galaxy, the Milky Way. It is targeted to launch in 2024.

JHU-APL/NASA

This illustration shows NASA's Dragonfly rotorcraft-lander approaching a site on Saturn's exotic moon, Titan. Taking advantage of Titan's dense atmosphere and low gravity, Dragonfly will explore dozens of locations across the icy world, sampling and measuring the compositions of Titan's organic surface materials to characterize the habitability of Titan's environment and investigate the progression of prebiotic chemistry.

Courtesy NASA

NASA's Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope, slated to launch in the mid-2020s, has been named the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, after NASA's first chief astronomer.

JPL-Caltech/NASA

This is an artist's concept of the Europa Clipper spacecraft, which will investigate Jupiter's icy moon.

NASA

Bright swaths of red in the upper atmosphere, known as airglow, can be seen in this image from the International Space Station. NASA's ICON mission will observe how interactions between terrestrial weather and a layer of charged particles called the ionosphere create the colorful glow.

NASA

NASA's Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk mission -- known as the GOLD mission -- will examine the response of the upper atmosphere to force from the sun, the magnetosphere and the lower atmosphere.

MIT News/Goddard Space Flight Center/NASA

NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite launched in April and is already identifying exoplanets orbiting the brightest stars just outside our solar system. In the first three months since it began surveying the sky in July, it has found three exoplanets, with the promise of many more ahead.

Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/NASA

This is an artist's concept of the Solar Probe Plus spacecraft approaching the sun. In order to unlock the mysteries of the corona, but also to protect a society that is increasingly dependent on technology from the threats of space weather, we will send Solar Probe Plus to touch the sun.

Courtesy BREAKTHROUGH INITIATIVES

This illustration shows light beams from Earth pushing a tiny spacecraft's sail. The proposed Breakthrough Starshot project would send hundreds of "nanocraft" space probes 4.37 light years away -- at speeds of up to 100 million miles an hour -- to to explore Alpha Centauri, our nearest star system. The ambitious project is many years away from becoming reality.

Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize Foundation

Philanthropist Yuri Milner, left, and astrophysicist Stephen Hawking host a press conference to announce Breakthrough Starshot on Tuesday, April 12, 2016, in New York City. Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg also sits on the mission's board of directors.

NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI

No spacecraft had ever gone to Pluto before NASA's New Horizons made its fly-by on July 14, 2015. The probe sent back amazing, detailed images of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon. It also dazzled scientists with new information about Pluto's atmosphere and landscape. New Horizons is still going today, heading out into the Kuiper Belt.

NASA/JPL

This image shows the Curiosity rover doing a test drill on a rock dubbed "Bonanza King" to see if it would be a good place to dig deeper and take a sample. Curiosity was launched in 2011, and it is the most advanced rover ever built. It's helping scientists determine whether Mars is, or ever was, habitable for life forms.

NASA

The Kepler space observatory is the first NASA mission dedicated to finding Earth-size planets in or near the habitable zones of stars. Launched in 2009, Kepler has been detecting planets and planet candidates with a wide range of sizes and orbital distances. Yes, we are still finding new planets.

NASA

NASA's infrared-wavelength space telescope called NEOWISE may help make us safer. The space telescope hunts for asteroids and comets, including those that could pose a threat to Earth. During its planned three-year survey through 2016, NEOWISE will identify near-Earth objects, gather data on their size and take other measurements. The probe was launched on December 14, 2009, for its original mission -- to perform an all-sky astronomical survey. The probe was put in hibernation for several years, but it was fired up again in December 2013 to hunt for asteroids. Its images are now available to the public online.

NASA/JPL

NASA's Dawn spacecraft began orbiting the dwarf planet Ceres in March. Scientists were surprised by the large white spots shining on Ceres, seen above. On its way to Ceres, Dawn spent time studying the proto-planet Vesta in 2001. Ceres and Vesta are the two most massive bodies in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The mission, launched in 2007, is giving scientists new knowledge of how the solar system formed and evolved.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD

NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft was launched on January 12, 2005, and it traveled 268 million miles (431 million kilometers) to hurl its coffee table-sized probe into comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005. This image of Tempel 1 was taken by Deep Impact's camera 67 seconds after the probe hit the comet. Scattered light from the collision saturated the camera's detector and caused the bright splash seen in this image. The Deep Impact mission was supposed to end a few weeks later, but NASA approved an extension and renamed the spacecraft EPOXI and sent it on to fly by Comet Hartley 2 in November 2010. The probe stopped communicating with mission managers in September 2013 and was declared lost.

NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

The Cassini spacecraft ended its mission in 2017. The probe was launched on October 15, 1997, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. It arrived at Saturn on June 30, 2004. The spacecraft dropped a probe called Huygens to the surface of Saturn's moon Titan. It was the first landing on a moon in the outer solar system.

NASA

The Stardust spacecraft was launched on February 7, 1999, from Cape Canaveral, Florida. After traveling 3.5 billion miles (5.6 billion kilometers), the spacecraft made history by capturing images of asteroid Annefrank and collecting samples of comet Wild 2 and successfully returning them to Earth. It also took spectacular images of comet Tempel 1. The probe's mission ended on March 25, 2011, when mission managers put it in safe mode and turned off the transmitter for the last time.

NASA

Surveyor 1 was the first U.S. spacecraft to make a soft landing on the Moon. The program ran during the mid-1960s and was declared a success. The program's focus eventually switched to support of the Apollo program.

NASA

A model of Explorer 1, America's first satellite, is held by, from left, NASA official William Pickering, scientist James Van Allen and rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun. The team was gathered at a news conference at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington to announce the satellite's successful launch. It had been launched a few hours before, on January 31, 1958.

At the conference in Hong Kong, Ashurbeyli explained that Asgardia is a project he has been dreaming of since childhood.

“I was interested in doing something unusual that nobody else was doing,” Ashurbeyli told CNN. “It was my dream to create an independent country.”

That ambition became more concrete after Ashurbeyli gave a speech at a conference on space law at McGill University in Montreal in 2016, where he was inspired by a discussion about the laws governing murder, marriage and divorce in space.

“I thought: ‘Why not organize a country?’ Not only for lawyers. But for technicians, for engineers, for every human … because he’s currently restricted by the laws of the country he was born in.”

Currently space law is adhered to in the form of the Outer Space Treaty, signed by 103 countries including the US and Russia.

Asgardia advocates for the creation of a new legal platform in space.

Becoming a legitimate country

Ashurbeyli says Asgardia will apply for UN recognition as a nation in 2018.

If the Security Council approves the application, then two-thirds of members of the General Assembly must vote for its admission.

But whether Asgardia will get that far is uncertain.

“A state has to have these characteristics: a permanent population; a defined territory, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states. And it must be recognized as a state by other states,” Joanne Gabrynowicz, a space law expert and professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology’s School of Law, told CNN.

“So the premise that Asgardia is a ‘nation’ is debatable.”

NASA Ames Research Center

In 1975 a research group led by Princeton professor Gerard O'Neill conducted a 10 week study of future space colonies. The NASA-sponsored research and the paper born of it was given to artists Rick Guidice and Don Davis, commissioned to illustrate the fantastical and as yet unrealized concepts.

NASA Ames Research Center

O'Neill's team settled on three potential designs for the future space stations: the Bernal Sphere, the Toroidal Colony (pictured) and the Cylindrical Colony. Potential capacity ranged from 10,000 people to one million, and featured circular designs which rotated to generate artificial gravity.

NASA Ames Research Center

The Cylindrical Colony, the most spacious of O'Neill's concepts, had huge windows fitted to allow light to filter through to the landscapes within. The design, later dubbed the 'O'Neill Cylinder', was riffed on in Christopher Nolan's intergalactic blockbuster "Interstellar" forty years later.

NASA Ames Research Center

The Bernal Sphere was first proposed by John Desmond Bernal as far back as 1929, with O'Neill's team adapting the half-century old idea. Shrunk down to 500 meters wide they proposed a highly-curved living surface that featured a "crystal palace" for agriculture and light reflected in via windows near the poles.

NASA Ames Research Center

O'Neill in a paper presented to NASA uses 1990 as a hypothetical start date for a space colony, with the team drawing up a number of potential costs for construction and transportation -- even the volume of livestock each station would need to ship in.

NASA Ames Research Center

Rick Guidice's painting of a cutaway of the Bernal Sphere also shows some of the huge solar arrays required to power the station and its rotation.

NASA Ames Research Center

Despite the futuristic technology required to put such a massive structure in space, all of the artwork from Guidice and Davis shows lush green landscapes -- a far cry from the reality of the International Space Station today.

NASA Ames Research Center

O'Neill suggests that the compact living area of the Bernal Sphere could be offset with separate agricultural modules, spacious enough for industrial-scale farming.

NASA Ames Research Center

Don Davis' illustration of a Cylindrical Colony imagines what a solar eclipse would look like from space, featuring two columns of land hidden from the sun altogether experiencing and night time.

NASA Ames Research Center

Davis depicts a construction crew piecing together a Bernal Sphere complete with houses, grass and rivers, seemingly unscathed by the vacuum of space.

NASA Ames Research Center

The Cylindrical Colony was never envisaged a solitary structure, instead orbiting with a partner.

NASA Ames Research Center

A Bernal Sphere with tilted arrays to maximize exposure to the sun.

NASA Ames Research Center

An exterior view of a Toroidal colony, featuring a giant tilted mirror providing sunlight to the interior surface of the ring.

Ashurbeyli says Asgardia will form a democratic government in the next six months, and then a Court, Prosecutors Office, National Audit Office and the other governmental bodies.

When asked by CNN how Asgardia intends to provide peace to its citizens without a physical settlement, Ashurbeyli says the nation’s citizens can take advantage of their “dual citizenship”.

“If I have problems on Earth, I’ll have my embassy from Asgardia. (It’s as if) you are a tourist, you can go to your embassy and they’ll try to help you.”

Governmental departments will be run by Asgardians in the locations they represent, while the administrative center will be in Vienna.

Ashurbeyli does, however, recognize the multitude of issues that come with forming his own nation – let alone one based in space.

“We have to be like a normal country. All countries have problems, and soon we will have the same problems,” he tells CNN.

“But we will have more than normal countries because we are not on earth.”