Turkey is close to signing an agreement with Russia for cooperation in space, Serdar Hüseyin Yıldırım, the head of the country’s space agency, told the Russian TASS news agency in an interview.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced in February that Turkey planned to expand its space programme to include sending a rocket to the moon by its centenary year in 2023.
“We have plans for signing an agreement in the near future,” Yıldırım said of the Russia deal, TASS reported on Monday.
“Space exploration is a very complex and costly work. It requires high technologies, and for this reason international cooperation is very important,” he said. “As far as Russia is concerned, we have vast opportunities in many fields.”
Russia and Turkey are negotiating a bilateral agreement for enhancing cooperation in space, Russian space agency Roscosmos told TASS on Feb. 10. Roscosmos said it expected Turkey to present specific proposals, including plans for a space mission by a Turkish astronaut.
Turkey aims to make a rough landing on the moon with a “national and authentic” hybrid rocket by the end of 2023, Erdoğan said in a glitzy presentation on Feb. 9. He did not provide details of the budget for the programme or how it would be achieved.
Ahval