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Asgardia is planning to build a space station on the Moon and in the Earth orbit.
The idea was announced at a press conference in Hong Kong. In the announcement Asgardia also shares its plan to launch the first satellite, Asgardia-1, this fall.
Asgardia is known as the first space nation. Its plans are launching a cubesat on an Orbital ATK Cygnus spaceship from Wallops Island, Virginia in September. The flying 512 gb hard drive will be installed by NanoRacks and orbit around the Earth for five years.
We plan on having an orbital station in space and on the Moon #Asgardia pic.twitter.com/cJpJl57xSI
— Asgardia (@AsgardiaSpace) June 13, 2017
Everybody who wants to be a citizen of this space nation can be one, just by signing up online. The citizens, the Asgardians, could upload data on the cubesat. The basic idea is that these data are just images and messages, but a possibility of sending some data with illegal content can’t be excluded as well.
Therefore, Asgardia announced for the New Scientist, that each set of data will be screened before being set up. 300 kb of data can be uploaded to the satellite by one person.
Dr Igor Ashurbeyli: “We are not the best. We are the future.” #Asgardia pic.twitter.com/hNd8eEhmqR
— Asgardia (@AsgardiaSpace) June 13, 2017
At first no one took the idea of a space nation seriously. Everybody thought of it like something fun to do. People would sign up and imagine being part of a space nation, call themselves Asgardians. But once the company announced its plan to build a space station, things changed.
According to a concept presented by the company, people will walk around an enormous space station while vehicles will fly over their heads. There are still some talks in the IFL Science office about its purpose. It may be like a Stanford Torus, which rotates to provide a centrifugal force and artificial gravity.
This plan can be seen on the second picture. Here you can see a much realistic modular space station with a bigger station which has a shape of a ring in its background.
Maybe this concept images are nothing more than concepts. It’s a bit weird for a company whose aim is to be taken seriously, to post such illustrations of things that won’t be built in the near future.
Another strange thing announced during the press conference is Asgardia’s plan to form a Parliament in six months. A national calendar with three national holidays was also announced. If we make a wild guess, probably they would be: Asgardia’s birthday (12 October), National Unity Day (18 June), and Year Day (31 December).
And the weird things go on. Everyone can apply and become a “member of Parliament” for Asgarida, depending on the number of open positions. 10, 000 people should give you their support so you could apply for a post.
If you are a registered citizen of Asgardia, from June 18th, you’ll have the honor to participate in the choice of the nation’s flag, national anthem and the nation’s constitution.
Everybody who wants can register as a citizen on Asgardia’s site. According to the company, there are more than 190.000 citizens from 200 countries, registered on the site. So when it comes to population, this is the 185th largest country in the world.
Asgardia said that launching this satellite is just the first step to launching a numerous number of satellites. In that way solar flares can be monitored, space debris can be tracked and asteroids can be found. This in fact sounds more plausible than building a big Stanford Torus in orbit.
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