The TÜRKSAT 6A Communication Satellite Project, which will be carried out under the leadership of TÜBİTAK UZAY together with TAI, ASELSAN and CTECH companies, was signed with the presence of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
The TÜRKSAT 6A Communication Satellite Project, which will be carried out under the leadership of TÜBİTAK Space Technologies Research Institute in cooperation with TAI, ASELSAN and CTECH companies, was signed by Feridun Bilgin, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Transport, Maritime Affairs and Communications; Prof. Dr. Yücel Altunbaşak, President of TÜBİTAK; and Prof. Dr. Ensar Gül, General Manager of TÜRKSAT AŞ.
In addition to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Fikri Işık, Minister of Science, Industry and Technology, Hasan Basri Güzeloğlu, Governor of Kocaeli, İbrahim Karaosmanoğlu, Mayor of the Metropolitan Municipality, and officials from relevant institutions attended the signing ceremony.
In his speech at the TÜRKSAT 6A Indigenous Communication Satellite Project Signing Ceremony held at TÜBİTAK Gebze Campus on December 15, 2014, President Erdoğan congratulated the engineers, scientists and employees involved in the project.
Achievements of the Indigenous Communication Satellite TÜRKSAT 6A
In 2011, just one year after the launch of the RASAT satellite, Turkey designed and built the high-resolution GÖKTÜRK-2 satellite and launched it in 2012, showing the world what it could do in satellite and space technologies.
TÜRKSAT 6A, which will cover Europe, Asia and North Africa, will weigh approximately 4 tons including fuel. The satellite will be placed in geostationary orbit at 42 degrees east longitude, approximately 36,000 kilometers above the ground. The satellite will have a service life of 15 years, with a total of 20 transponders, 4 of which will be spare. All tests of the satellite will be carried out domestically. Within the scope of the project, many subsystems to be used on the satellite will be given space history, and these subsystems will form the infrastructure of the national communication satellites to be developed later.
With the launch of the TÜRKSAT 6A Satellite, signal transmission of local and foreign television channels, mobile communication, communication between land, sea and air vehicles, internet, data transfer and emergency call services will be provided.
The costs of the TÜRKSAT 6A Communication Satellite will be covered by the Ministry of Transport, Maritime Affairs and Communications, TÜRKSAT and TÜBİTAK, and this project will provide strategic support to the goal of building communication satellites with national capabilities. With the completion of this project, Turkey will be among the 10 countries capable of building communication satellites.
