Türkiye’s 1st homegrown satellite completes 5th ignition in journey towards orbit

By Mustafa Calkaya

ANKARA (AA) - Turkish Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Abdulkadir Uraloglu said early Thursday that Turksat 6A, Türkiye’s first homegrown communications satellite, had completed its fifth and final ignition.

"The fifth and final ignition, which lasted for 5.5 minutes and began at 23:58 (2058GMT), was successfully completed," Uraloglu wrote on X.

"Everything is going smoothly and under control in our space journey," he added.

Turksat 6A was launched last week into space as the result of 10 years of work, bringing the number of Türkiye’s active satellites to nine.

After successfully passing all tests, Turksat 6A was launched into space by Space X’s Falcon 9 rocket on July 8.

With the experience of the Turkish engineers who produced Turksat 6A, Türkiye became one of the few countries capable of producing communications satellites and eventually looks to become a satellite exporter.

Turksat 1C, the successor of the first communications satellite, Turksat 1B, was launched in 1996, followed by Turksat 2A in 2001, Turksat 3A in 2008, Turksat 4A in 2014, Turksat 4B in 2015 and Turksat 5A and 5B in 2021.​​​​​​​

*Alperen Aktas contributed to the story from Istanbul