Igor Ashurbeyli was born on 9 September 1963, in Baku, Azerbaijan, a descendant of the Azerbaijani noble family of Ashurbeyov. He graduated from the Azerbaijan State Oil Academy in 1985. In 1988, under the Soviet Union's then-new economic policies, he founded Socium, a small software company, serving as its first General Manager. It later become became Socium Holding, a holding company with over 10,000 employees at over 30 companies, where Ashurbeyli services as Chairman of the Board. In 1990, Ashurbeyli moved to Moscow. Starting in 1994, he held the positions of Deputy General Manager, First Deputy General Manager, and Chairman of the Board at SPA Almaz, later becoming its Chief Executive Officer from 2000 to 2011. Ashurbeyli resigned from SPA Almaz in 2011. From 2011, he was the Chairman of the Board and Scientific Supervisor of KB-1, a privately held company. From 2004, Ashurbeyli was the Chairman of the Board of the Nonprofit Non-Government Expert Society on Space Threat Defense. In 2015, ESSTD was granted special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council. He was awarded the Russian Federation Government Prize in Science and Technology of 2009. On 5 February 2016 Ashurbeyli was awarded the UNESCO Medal for contributions to the development of nanoscience and nanotechnologies during a ceremony held at UNESCO headquarters, Paris, France. Igor Ashurbeyli founded the Aerospace International Research Center in Vienna, Austria, in 2013. In 2014, the Center began publication of an international space journal, ROOM, of which Ashurbeyli is the editor-in-chief. In July 2018 Aerospace International Research Center was renamed to Asgardia Independent Research Center. On 12 October 2016 Igor Ashurbeyli announced in a press conference in Paris, France, "the birth of the new space nation Asgardia." The project is officially called the "Space Kingdom of Asgardia." The ultimate aim of the project is to create a new nation that allows access to outer space free of the control of existing nations. On 25 June 2018 in Vienna, Austria, in Hofburg Palace Igor Ashurbeyli was inaugurated as Asgardia's Head of Nation. Asgardia intends to launch a series of satellites into Earth orbit. Going forward, the Asgardia team hopes to create habitable platforms in low-earth orbits, which is also where the International Space Station is located. "It's not a fantasy. Going to Mars, the galactics, so on—that's just fake. I intend something more real," Igor Ashurbeyli told CNN in June of 2017. The Cygnus spacecraft that carried Asgardia-1 into space released Asgardia-1 and two other satellites on 12 November 2017. The Space Kingdom of Asgardia has claimed that it is now "the first nation to have all of its territory in space." Legal scholars doubt that Asgardia-1 can be regarded as a sovereign territory.
