Aiming to open up access to space technology, protect Earth from cosmic threats and foster peace, proposals for a new space nation have been unveiled 
 
 Will you become a citizen of Asgardia, the first nation state in space? 
 
 Proposals for the “first nation state in space” have been unveiled by a team of scientists and legal experts, who say the move will foster peace, open up access to space technologies and offer protection for citizens of planet Earth. 
 
 Dubbed “Asgardia” after one of the mythical worlds inhabited by the Norse gods, the team say the “new nation” will eventually become a member of the United Nations, with its own flag and anthem devised by members of the public through a series of competitions. 
 
 According to the project website, Asgardia “will offer an independent platform 
 
 free from the constraint of a land-based country’s laws. It will become a place it in orbit which is truly ‘no man’s land’”. 
 
 Initially, it would seem, this new nation will consist of a single satellite, scheduled to be launched next year, with its citizens residing firmly on terra firma. 
 
 Speaking to the Guardian through an interpreter, the project lead Igor Ashurbeyli, said: “Physically the citizens of that nation state will be on Earth; they will be living in different countries on Earth, so they will be a citizen of their own country and at the same time they will be citizens of Asgardia.” 
 
 “When the number of those applications goes above 100,000 we can officially apply to the UN for the status of state,” he added. 
 
 According to the project website “Any human living on Earth can become a citizen of Asgardia,” with the site featuring a simple registration form. At the time of writing more than 1000 individuals had already signed up. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest An artist’s impression of an Asgardia shield, protecting the Earth from man-made and natural threats ranging from asteroids to space junk. Illustration: James Vaughan 
 
 When asked why people should register to become citizens of Asgardia, Ashurbeyli said: “I do believe that as soon as this country becomes a part of the UN family, citizenship of that country will be really quite prestigious.” 
 
 A Russian businessman and nanoscientist who also founded the Vienna-based Aerospace International Research Center and is currently chairman of Unesco’s Science of Space committee, Ashurbeyli says the project aims to open up a conversation about regulations surrounding space activity. 
 
 
 
 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.” 
 
 
 
 Christopher Newman, an expert in space law at the UK’s University of Sunderland, said the project reflects the fact that the geopolitical landscape of space activity has changed since the Outer Space Treaty was drawn up in the 1960s. 
 
 
 
 But, he added, it was not clear how Asgardia would fit into current international regulations, with the project facing significant hurdles, 
 
 from getting UN recognition for Asgardia, to issues around liability. 
 
 “It is an exciting development in many ways because it will be interesting to see how this goes,” said Newman. “But there are formidable obstacles in international space law for them to overcome. What they are actually advocating is a complete re-visitation of the current space law framework.” 
 
 Ashurbeyli says the hope is that Asgardia will eventually become an official “launch state”. But, he admits, at least in the short term cooperation from other countries will be required . 
 
 While the project’s proposals remain vague, the vision for Asgardia is lofty. The team say that one of their early plans is to create “a state-of-the-art protective shield for all humankind from cosmic, manmade and natural threats to life on earth.” Such threats, they say, include the dangers posed by space junk, and even asteroids. But, at present, details remain hazy about what form such a shield could take. 
 
 And while the project does not currently include plans to set up an Asgardian settlement in space, Ashurbeyli believes life beyond Earth will be vital to the future of humankind. “We are laying the foundations to make that possible in the distant future,” he said. ||||| Plans to create the first "nation in space" were unveiled in Paris on Wednesday. They are nothing if not ambitious. 
 
 The new nation will launch its own satellite in 2017 and dedicate itself to opening up access to space. The goal is to foster world peace, as well as protect earth from rogue asteroids and space debris. 
 
 The new space country will be called "Asgardia," named for the city in the skies ruled by Norse god Odin. 
 
 We aren't talking about an actual orbiting city or space station where humans will live. Instead, it's more a scientific, legal and technological experiment being led by Russian nanoscientist Dr. Igor Ashurbeyli, founder of the Aerospace International Research Center and newly appointed chairman of UNESCO's Science of Space committee. 
 
 "Asgardia is also unique from a philosophical aspect -- to serve entire humanity and each and everyone, regardless of his or her personal welfare and the prosperity of the country where they happened to be born," Ashurbeyli said in a release. 
 
 A rather simple website for Asgardia launched after a press conference Wednesday to kick off crowdsourcing the new country's flag, insignia and anthem. It will also allow wannabe Asgardians to register their interest for citizenship. The idea is that once Asgardia has 100,000 people applying for citizenship, it is then eligible to apply to the United Nations for official nation status, according to Ashurbeyli. 
 
 Supposedly all Asgardians would remain physically in their current resident nations, but also be citizens of this other country with its sole territory in the galaxy being a satellite circling the Earth. It's the access to space the satellite represents that is really the point of the whole thing. 
 
 "The mission of Asgardia (is) to create opportunities for broader access to space, enabling non-traditional space nations to realize their scientific aspirations is exciting," said Professor David Alexander, director of the Rice Space Institute at Rice University. 
 
 The way space works now is that there's something called the Outer Space Treaty that most (but not all) nations have signed. It essentially says that whatever country sends a mission to space is then responsible for that mission. So if NASA or an American company like SpaceX sent up a satellite that crashed into and destroyed a Russian satellite, Russia can hold the United States Government accountable. 
 
 In turn, this means the US Government has to regulate American companies working in space to avoid such international incidents. 
 
 James Vaughan / Asgardia.space 
 
 So it's easy to see Asgardia as simply a way to either side-step the Outer Space Treaty or perhaps do an end-run around government regulations that are a key part of making the treaty work by forming a new government accountable to nobody but the space enthusiasts that formed it. 
 
 I contacted space lawyer (yes, that's a thing) Joanne Irene Gabrynowicz, who is editor-in-chief Emerita of the Journal of Space Law, and she told me that Asgardia is likely to have trouble in its quest to be recognized as a country. 
 
 "Under international law, there are specific criteria for an entity to be recognized as a nation. It must have territory and a population, and be recognized as a nation by other nations, among other things. Just declaring that a nation exists is not enough," she told me via e-mail. "There are (a) number of entities on Earth whose status as an independent nation have been a matter of dispute for a long time. It is reasonable to expect that the status an unpopulated object that is not on Earth will be disputed." 
 
 There's also at least one other independent nation in space that's already been declared and disputed. 
 
 In 1949, American James Mangan filed paperwork with Cook County, Illinois laying claim to all of space beyond Earth, declaring it the "Nation of Celestial Space" (also known as "Celestia") with himself as founder and representative. Mangan had similar designs on securing peace in space and quickly set about defending his claim by notifying the US, Soviet Union and a few other nations that his country had banned atmospheric nuclear tests. In the early days of the space race he would also send letters to the Americans and Soviets protesting their encroachment on his territory. 
 
 The world, including the United Nations, politely ignored Mangan's persistent requests for acknowledgment for decades. He passed away in 1970 and little has been heard from Celestia since. 
 
 Asgardia has the benefit of the internet to organize its claim to existence and perhaps raise funds for the satellite that would give it a physical territory in the universe and some basic utility for its "citizens" to rally around. 
 
 It still remains to be seen if the United Nations and the rest of humanity will see Asgardia as any more legit than Celestia, but that hasn't stopped over 4,000 potential Asgardians from registering their interest in under 12 hours. ||||| A space nation, independent of countries on Earth, could be founded after a team of engineers, scientists and legal experts put forward proposals for an extra-terrestrial state. 
 
 The project, which is led by Russian scientist Dr Igor Ashurbeyli, Chairman of UNESCOs Science of Space committee, aims to create an area in space which is beyond the control of individual nations. 
 
 Under current space law, government’s must authorise and supervise space programmes run from their own countries even if they are commercial. 
 
 But the group of scientists say that by creating a new nation, space activities can ‘flourish free from the tight restrictions of state control that currently exist’ 
 
 The team has named the new state ‘Asgardia’ – derived from Asgard, one of the nine world’s in Norse mythology. ||||| When a meteor exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia in February, the world’s space agencies found out along with the rest of us, on Twitter and YouTube. That, says former astronaut Ed Lu, is unacceptable—and the United Nations agrees. Last week the General Assembly approved a set of measures that Lu and other astronauts have recommended to protect the planet from the dangers of rogue asteroids. 
 
 The U.N. plans to set up an “International Asteroid Warning Group” for member nations to share information about potentially hazardous space rocks. If astronomers detect an asteroid that poses a threat to Earth, the U.N.’s Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space will help coordinate a mission to launch a spacecraft to slam into the object and deflect it from its collision course. 
 
 Lu and other members of the Association of Space Explorers (ASE) recommended these steps to the U.N. as a first step to address at the long-neglected problem of errant space rocks. “No government in the world today has explicitly assigned the responsibility for planetary protection to any of its agencies,” ASE member Rusty Schweickart, who flew on the Apollo 9 mission in 1969, said Friday at the American Museum of Natural History. “NASA does not have an explicit responsibility to deflect an asteroid, nor does any other space agency.” The ASE advocates that each nation delegate responsibility for dealing with a potential asteroid impact to an internal agency—before the event is upon us. 
 
 The next step in defending Earth against dangerous asteroids is to find them, Lu said. “There are 100 times more asteroids out there than we have found. There are about 1 million asteroids large enough to destroy New York City or larger. Our challenge is to find these asteroids first before they find us.” 
 
 Early warning is important because it increases the chance of being able to deflect a threatening asteroid once it is found. If a spacecraft struck an asteroid 5 or 10 years before the rock was due to hit Earth, a slight orbital alternation should be enough to make it pass Earth by; if the asteroid wasn’t detected soon enough, evacuating the impact zone may be the only option available. “If we don’t find it until a year out, make yourself a nice cocktail and go out and watch,” Schweickart quipped. 
 
 The B612 Foundation, a non profit Lu founded to address the problem of asteroid impacts, is developing a privately funded infrared space telescope called Sentinel, which it hopes to launch in 2017. The telescope would begin a systematic search for hazardous near-Earth objects. 
 
 The ASE astronauts are also asking the United Nations to coordinate a practice asteroid deflection mission to test out the technologies for pushing a rock off course should the need arise. The meteor in Chelyabinsk, which injured 1,000 people but killed none, was an ideal warning shot across the bow, said American Museum of Natural History astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson, who hosted Friday’s event—now, it’s time for Earth’s citizens to take action. Lu agreed: “Chelyabinsk was bad luck,” he said. “If we get hit again 20 years from now, that is not bad luck—that’s stupidity.”
– If your chosen candidate doesn't win on Nov. 8, there's perhaps no need to decamp to Canada or Russia: Become a citizen of Asgardia instead. That's the name of the newly proposed "first nation state in space." Named after a world in Norse mythology that's located in the sky, the would-be extraterrestrial state stems from a project led by Russian scientist Igor Ashurbeyli, who heads UNESCO's Science of Space committee, reports the Telegraph. There's no terra firma for Asgardian citizens to travel to: The Guardian reports Asgardia appears to "consist of a single satellite," planned to be launched by the project next year. Ashurbeyli explains "physically the citizens of that nation state will be on Earth," meaning they'll be a citizen of their own country and Asgardia simultaneously. CNET frames Asgardia as a "scientific, legal, and technological experiment," with Ashurbeyli planning to petition the UN for the status of state once 100,000 people have applied to be citizens on the Asgardia website, which launched Wednesday. Among the project's ambitious goals: to create a state-of-the-art protective shield to keep space debris and asteroids from reaching Earth's surface. Space regulation is another focus: Since the late 1960s, the Outer Space Treaty has assigned liability for objects sent into space on the nation launching them. Asgardia could in theory "do an end-run around government regulations that are a key part of making the treaty work by forming a new government accountable to nobody but the space enthusiasts that formed it," observes CNET. (See what NASA did in space earlier this year.)