The Turkish Space Agency announced last May that a citizen will be selected for Turkey’s first manned space mission. In a short time, we learned that more than 30 thousand applications were made. Now, a date has been given for the first Turk to go to space.
The Turkish citizen who will go to space will be elected in November!
In a statement made by the President of the Turkish Space Agency, Serdar Hüseyin Yıldırım today, he said that approximately 1 month later, in November, the first Turkish citizen to go into space will be elected. In addition, 1 alternate candidate will be selected. Afterwards, he will receive training in the USA, which lasts for about 6 months.
It is said that more than 30 thousand applications have been received in the past months. However, it was stated that among these applications, only close to 300 people met the necessary criteria, that is, the selection would be made from among the 1% of the applicants. The application requirements were as follows:
- Age: Born after May 23, 1977
- Size: 149.5 cm – 190.5 cm
- Kilo: 43 kg – 110 kg
- Tongue: To meet the English proficiency requirement
- Education: To have graduated from one of the faculties of Education and Medicine in the field of Engineering, Science / Basic sciences, Science
- Health: To comply with the determined health criteria
- Application deadline: 23 June 2022- at 20:23
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Speaking on Turkey’s 10-year space activities and strategy plan, TUA President Serdar Hüseyin Yıldırım said:
“We continue to walk without slowing down in all 10 targets in our work. While some progress faster and others slower, we are progressing in all of them. Our mission to the Moon is to make a soft landing on the Moon’s surface at the end of 2028 and early 2029, and to enable a vehicle to collect data on the Moon’s surface.
We want to study subjects that have not been studied and identified as much as possible, but we have not done such a thing as a country, and Turkey has not had a ‘deep space’ mission so far. Our space studies consist of close orbit and geostationary orbit.
Since this is a job that has never been done, we need to find out first. That’s why we put a preliminary phase into the project and we said that we will first build our vehicle, which we will manufacture mostly domestically, and reach the Moon with our own unique hybrid engine. We call it a hard landing.
In this project, the designs are now finished. A spacecraft very similar to a satellite. Behind it will be a large propulsion system, which is our hybrid engine. It will weigh between 2.5-3 tons, about the size of a car. Production will begin this month. In some parts, unfortunately, foreign dependency continues. There is also an extension in their lead times due to the pandemic. We are currently working on all of these. As of today, we will realize this mission in 1.5-2 years.“
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