You might think that space travel is scary and dangerous, and honestly, it is, but that does not stop people from wanting to get there. While living on Mars may sound a little far-fetched, living in the Earth’s own orbit does not. The number of people who actually wish to get to space is unbelievably high. The Space Nation Asgardia aims to become a fully independent nation in space, free from the earthly conflicts of states, nations, and religions and recognized by the United Nations.
The chairman of UNESCO’s Science of Space Committee, Dr. Igor Ashurbeyli announced the creation of Asgardia last October in Paris. In the first 20 days of the announcement, the team received 500,000 applications from people to become citizens.
Looking at the influx of applications, Asgardia made the rules more strict and filtered out applications from children who registered without their parent’s permission, duplicate applications, bot applications, and people who did not provide the required information. The group, now has 200,000 verified citizens from around 200 countries, all of them receiving a certificate of Space Nation Asgardia.
Source: Press Association
The foundation stone for Asgardia, the microsatellite Asgardia-1 is due to be sent into space this September that will carry personal data uploaded by the 1.5 million Asgardians. The launch will happen exactly 60 years after the first artificial satellite Sputnik was sent into the orbit.
Computer Scientist Dr. Ashurbeyli, the mind behind Asgardia said, “Asgardia-1 will mark the beginning of a new space era, taking our citizens into space in virtual form, at first. Asgardia-1 will contain data stored for free for up to 1.5 million Asgardians on board the satellite. These are historic days, and your names and data will forever stay in the memory of the new space humanity, as they will be reinstalled on every new Asgardia satellite we launch.”
Source: Press Association