posted 10-12-2016 10:14 PM               

The first Asgardia satellite is planned to be launched in Autumn 2017, sixty years after the first ever satellite launch, and will mark a new era in the Space Age as the satellite will be independent of any current nation state on Earth: the satellite will comprise the nation itself, creating its own legal framework, flag and other symbols of nationhood.

The project team is being led by Dr Igor Ashurbeyli, one of the Russian Federation's most distinguished scientists and founder of the Aerospace International Research Center (AIRC) in Vienna. In a separate event in Paris yesterday, he became chairman of UNESCO's 'Science of Space' committee. Dr Ashurbeyli has consulted a group of globally renowned scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and legal experts on the development of the concept.

posted 10-12-2016 11:23 PM               

At present, the Outer Space Treaty that underpins international space law states that responsibility and liability for objects sent into space lies with the nation that launched them.

But the project team claim that Asgardia will set a new precedent, shifting responsibility to the new "space nation" itself.

"The existing state agencies represent interests of their own countries and there are not so many countries in the world that have those space agencies," said Ashurbeyli.

"The ultimate aim is to create a legal platform to ensure protection of planet Earth and to provide access to space technologies for those who do not have that access at the moment."

posted 11-16-2017 08:47 AM               

The "nanosat" — it is roughly the size of a loaf of bread — undertook a two-day journey from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, the United States, to the International Space Station (ISS).

It contains 0.5 TB of data belonging to 18,000 of Asgardia's citizens, such as family photographs, as well as digital representations of the space nation's flag, coat of arms and constitution.