Opening the 77th International Astronautical Congress in Antalya on 5 October, the first held in Türkiye, with delegates from 111 countries, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said construction of the Turkish spaceport in Somalia has begun. He added that the Moon Research Program’s lander, about 3.5 tonnes with more than 80% domestic content, has finished production, assembly and integration and is now in system-level environmental tests. Erdoğan also called the weaponisation of space and an arms race there “extremely wrong”. After the ceremony he received SpaceX executives together with ministers Kacır and Uraloğlu; no statement on the talks was released. Our take: a launch site of its own would be Türkiye’s biggest step towards independent access to orbit, but no timetable or rocket plan for it has been published yet.
3.5 tMoon spacecraft mass
>80%domestic content