Turkey is planning to ramp up its space ambitions by sending a rocket to the Moon by the end of the decade. The space agency will make use of a domestically build rocket engine that will launch a test mission in 2023.
Serdar Hüseyin Yildirim, president of the Turkish Space Agency (TUA), spoke about the plans at the Global Space Exploration Conference (GLEX) 2021 in St. Petersburg, Russia. The space program was later unveiled by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Test mission to make rough landing
The rover that will be launched in 2028 or 2029 will have a soft landing on the lunar surface and collect scientific data on the soil, noted Yildirim. The rocket will be built using a hybrid engine that is under development in Turkey. “We intend to use our own engine to reach the moon,” Yildirim said. “But for this phase, our spacecraft will be brought to low Earth orbit with an international collaboration.”
As per a report by the Turkish Anadolu Press Agency, the mission scheduled for 2023 will make a rough landing on the Moon, allowing Turkish engineers to gather data for a soft landing in the late 2020s. The country also aims to send a Turkish citizen to the International Space Station in the future to carry out space research.
“We are trying to finalize our negotiations with the parties,” Yildirim said. “In a few months they will be finalized, and we’ll start the training process.”
Space program to employ more citizens
Turkey’s National Space Program, published in February this year, also envisions establishing a local Turkish spaceport and a domestic regional positioning system alongside a timing satellite system. The Turkish space agency was formed in 2018, and the move was criticized due to plummeting economy of the nation.
Supporters, however, believe that the space program will push researchers to stay in the country instead of moving abroad for opportunities. No details regarding the budget of the program have been divulged. The new mission will allow the nation to join an exclusive club of successfully carrying out complex space exploration missions on its own.
