Late last year, an international team of scientists announced Project Asgardia, the first independent space nation free from the constraints of Earth's laws. You can read more about this project in our previous article. To be honest, at that time it all looked, to put it mildly, very controversial. This idea looks no less controversial now, however, according to a new application filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the project is gaining momentum, and the people behind the Asgardia project are looking for an opportunity to launch a space an orbiting satellite that will host a database that is not subject to the jurisdiction of Earth's laws and regulations.
“If Asgardia can find a country that has not signed treaties on the use of outer space, then launching a satellite from that country would not be subject to international regulatory obligations,” said Mark Sundall, professor of space law at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law.
"In fact, we will face a new world of the Wild West."
Nicknamed according to Scandinavian mythology in honor of the city of Asgard soaring in the sky, Asgardia will be a permanent space station, whose inhabitants will be engaged in mining on asteroids, as well as protecting the Earth from external space threats in the form of meteorites, space debris and other dangerous objects.
In October last year, recruiting began. The project announced that the first 100,000 registered people will be able to obtain guaranteed citizenship of Asgardia, regardless of their nationality on Earth. To date, more than 180,000 people have actually sworn allegiance to the still fictional state. With the help of crowdsourcing, Asgardia has created its own flag, emblem, and at the moment work is underway to write the national anthem, which they promise to complete and present on June 18.
Later, it is planned to introduce its own currency, as well as a calendar, which will be a regular 12-month earth calendar, but with the addition of another month, called Asgard. It will be located between June and July.
“We have to leave Earth because it is in the very nature of humanity,” says Ram Yaku, rector of the McGill Institute of Aerospace Law and co-founder of Asgardia.
“Humanity left Africa and covered the entire globe. But the resources of the Earth will sooner or later run out. And we want to do what no one else has done. Found the first extra-planetary space nation."
Promotional video:
At the time of the first announcement of their plans, the founders of the project announced their desire to launch the Asgardia-1 satellite within 18 months, after which preparations will begin for the implementation of the second part of the project - fundraising for the construction of a space station. And judging by the recent filing with the FCC, the project is at least on track for the first part of the plan.
The document submitted to the regulatory chamber indicates that the organization intends to launch a satellite by September 2017 as part of one of the next missions to deliver supplies to the International Space Station.
The satellite itself will be a compact cubesat measuring 10 x 10 centimeters and weighing about one kilogram. On board the cubesat will be a 512 gigabyte solid-state drive with preloaded data, but what kind of data it will be, the document does not say.
According to the journalists of the portal Motherboard, with the help of this cubesat the founders of the project want to test how viable this method of storing data "outside the Earth" can be.
“Asgardia-1 will also carry particle detectors to determine the level of radiation that its internal electronics may be exposed to,” the application says.
The success of the first mission could open up the opportunity for the project to store data in space that is not subject to Earth's laws. It seems that the same owners of torrent trackers could hardly refuse such an opportunity.
Of course, the question of how legal this whole venture is will be discussed by the public more than once, but the very fact of all these conversations already gives a clear idea of how weak and incomplete the legal system of the Earth is for resolving the issues of people who want to colonize our near-Earth space …
Stephen Freeland, a professor of international law at the University of Western Sydney who recently took stock of Australia's Outer Space Act, believes that holes and imperfections in the legal system will allow enterprising people to take advantage of space and occupy space long before regulators can. do something about it.
“Someday there will be weddings in space, have children, kill each other. We need to prepare clear proposals for solving these issues in the future, and I think that projects like the one discussed today will help to stir up and speed up the adoption of the necessary decisions, "Freeland commented to News.com.au, adding that behind the Asgardia project itself there are scientists of the "highest caliber".
Asgardia's founders plan to hold a press conference in Hong Kong next week to unveil the satellite they have developed.
“The date of the event will coincide with the opening of a new modern space era and will take place 60 years after the launch of the first artificial Earth satellite, Sputnik-1,” the project's official website says.
NIKOLAY KHIZHNYAK
