Turkey sets its sights on the Moon — Ankara's historic step

Turkey has joined the Artemis Accords, becoming the 71st participating nation, and announced plans to launch a spacecraft to the Moon in 2027. The AYAP-1 project involves entering lunar orbit and a hard landing, while the next mission, AYAP-2, aims for a soft landing with a Turkish lunar rover.

Turkey officially joined the Artemis Accords, becoming the 71st participating nation in the US-led international space exploration program. The document was signed on August 31 at NASA headquarters in Washington by Turkish Minister of Industry and Technology Mehmet Fatih Kacır in the presence of NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. The Accords, founded in 2020 by eight countries, are based on the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and establish principles of cooperation, transparency, and mutual assistance during emergencies on the Moon, Mars, and other celestial bodies. The main task of the Turkish Space Agency will be the AYAP-1 project: a spacecraft is to enter lunar orbit at an altitude of about 100 kilometers and perform a hard landing using a domestically developed hybrid propulsion system. The launch is planned for 2027 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral. The next stage will be the AYAP-2 mission, in which Turkey will attempt a soft landing and deploy its own lunar rover, using a fully Turkish-developed launch vehicle and engines. The accession to the Accords comes ahead of the International Astronautical Congress in Antalya in October. The article also mentions that Turkey's path to the Moon began in the 1990s with the creation of remote sensing satellites, and in January 2026, Turkish astronaut Alper Gezeravcı became the first Turkish citizen in space.