Asgardia Becomes the First Nation Deployed in Space (cnet.com)

An anonymous reader quotes CNET: An Orbital ATK Antares rocket carrying a cubesat named Asgardia-1 launched from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia early Sunday. The milk carton-sized satellite makes up the entirety of territory of the self-proclaimed "Space Kingdom" of Asgardia... Over 300,000 people signed up online to become "citizens" of the nation over the last year. The main privilege of citizenship so far involves the right to upload data to Asgardia-1 for safekeeping in orbit, seemingly far away from the pesky governments and laws of Earth-bound countries...

As of now, Asgardia's statehood isn't acknowledged by any other actual countries or the United Nations, and it doesn't really even fit the definition of a nation since it's not possible for a human to physically live in Asgardia. Not yet, at least. The long-term vision for Asgardia includes human settlements in space, on the moon and perhaps even more distant colonies.
On Tuesday Orbital ATK's spacecraft will dock with the International Space Station for a one-month re-supply mission -- then blast higher into orbit to deploy the space kingdom's satellite. "Asgardia space kingdom has now established its sovereign territory in space," read an online statement.

Next the space kingdom plans to hold elections for 150 Members of Parliament.

Comments

Sovereign-territory-in-space my ass

[Anonymous Coward]

HIGHLIGHTS from the Terms of service at https://asgardia.space/en/page/terms-of-service

"All disputes regarding these Terms of Service, with the exception of copyright claims, will be settled by arbitration in Austria, under its laws."

Re:Perhaps a different name would’ve been be

[mjwx]

Asgard is not a place, it's a people.

Actually it is a place in Norse Mythology. Its the world where the Norse gods lived, hence Stargate used it for the Asgardians (note they were mostly named after gods in Norse mythology). Midgard was the term for Earth if you were interested.