Industry and Technology Minister Mehmet Fatih Kacır announced that Türkiye's domestically developed lunar spacecraft will be sent into space in the early months of 2027. Presenting his ministry's 2027 budget to the Grand National Assembly's Planning and Budget Commission, Kacır said, "We will send our spacecraft into space in the early months of 2027, take it into lunar orbit and ultimately reach the Moon. We will become the ninth country to carry out its own lunar mission."
Kacır said the spacecraft was developed using expertise gained from satellite projects and produced with an 87% domestic content rate. During its mission, it will study the interaction between solar winds and the lunar surface, the mechanisms behind water formation on the Moon's surface, the Moon's magnetic fields and the thermal properties of its surface.
Polar orbit 100 kilometers above the lunar surface
Developed under the Lunar Research Program and weighing approximately 3.5 tons, the spacecraft is planned to enter a polar, circular mission orbit 100 kilometers above the lunar surface after a journey of about two months following its launch. Kacır had previously said that the spacecraft would operate for at least three months and that the mission could be extended to as long as 18 months depending on its performance. The mission also aims to use Türkiye's domestically developed hybrid rocket technology in deep space for the first time.
İMECE-2 in 2027 and İMECE-3 in 2028
Kacır also outlined the schedule for other space projects. He said İMECE-2, one of the members of the Earth-observation satellite constellation capable of imaging large areas and collecting data from the same region at frequent intervals, would be launched in 2027, while İMECE-3 would be launched in 2028, and work had begun on the TÜRKSAT 7A communications satellite. He said the domestically developed rubidium-based atomic clock required for the Regional Positioning and Timing System had been sent into space, while the spaceport under construction in Somalia would pave the way for Türkiye's independent access to space.
The minister said support was being provided for the employment of more than 24,000 researchers at 20 R&D centers and 310 ventures in technoparks working on space technologies.
The ministry's 2027 budget is 368.7 billion lira
Addressing industrial and technology data in his presentation, Kacır said R&D spending had risen from $1.2 billion in 2002 to $24.8 billion, more than 130,000 Togg vehicles had taken to the roads to date, including 55,000 over the past year, and the T6X model would enter production in 2027. Kacır said defense and aerospace exports had increased from $248 million in 2002 to more than $10 billion last year, and announced that the ministry's 2027 budget amounted to 368 billion 669 million lira.
Cover: Representative image. Images: Social media
