President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that İMECE, the first high-resolution observation satellite produced with domestic and national means, will be launched into orbit in space on Tuesday, April 11th.
In his post on his social media account, President Erdoğan said, "We will continue to exist in the global space race thanks to our trained human resources, the opportunities we provide and the technologies we have developed." used the phrase.
The post also included the Turkish flag emoji and the image in which the features of IMECE were indicated.
A launch ceremony will be held at the Institute in Ankara on Tuesday, April 11 for IMECE, developed by the TÜBİTAK Space Technologies Research Institute (TÜBİTAK UZAY). President Erdoğan will attend the ceremony via video message, Minister of National Defense Hulusi Akar and Minister of Industry and Technology Mustafa Varank will be at the ground station.
IMECE Satellite, which will reduce Turkey's dependence on abroad in satellite technologies, will be launched into orbit by Space X. The launch, which will start with the countdown, will take place at 09.50:XNUMX Turkish time.
In the meantime, imaging satellite AKUP developed by TÜBİTAK UZAY together with IMECE, imaging satellite KILIÇSAT produced in cooperation with ASELSAN and GÜMÜŞ, and internet of things and imaging satellite CONNECTA T2.1 cube satellites produced by PLAN-S company will be launched into space in the same rocket.
He was sent off to Vandenberg Space Force Base in the USA on February 21.
IMECE Satellite was sent off to Vandenberg Space Force Base in the USA on February 21, 2023, due to the earthquakes in Kahramanmaraş. For IMECE, a cabin that also features a clean room was developed for the first time by Nurus company with domestic and national facilities.
The satellite, which was sent from Esenboğa Airport to Vandenberg, where the launch will take place, made a safe journey thanks to the cabin, which is protective against all kinds of risks such as humidity, vibration and harmful rays and has a clean room feature produced locally.
The IMECE project, which started in 2017, has achieved significant gains in 6 years that will form the basis for the next generation satellite platforms.
Turkey's first sub-meter sub-meter electro-optical satellite
Developed within the scope of the project carried out with the coordination of the Ministry of National Defense and the Presidency of Defense Industry, supported by the Presidency Strategy and Budget Department and the TUBITAK 1007 program, the IMECE Satellite will be included in the inventory of the Air Force Command after the tests in orbit are completed.
With the inauguration of IMECE, Turkey will, for the first time, provide space history to an electro-optical satellite camera with sub-meter resolution, developed with domestic and national means.
IMECE, which will meet Turkey's need for high resolution satellite imagery, will operate in orbit simultaneously with the sun at an altitude of 680 kilometers.
The satellite, which can take images from all over the world without geographical restrictions, will serve Turkey in many areas such as target detection and diagnosis, natural disasters, mapping, agricultural applications.
The satellite's design mission life is planned to be 5 years.
The design duty life of the satellite, which can be used for civil and security purposes, is planned as 5 years. Within the scope of the project, a space-compatible electro-optical camera was designed, developed and produced for the first time in Turkey.
Thus, Turkey has become the producer and even exporter of its own camera from the position of providing images from foreign satellites.
Apart from the electro-optical camera, the electric propulsion system, sun detector, star tracks, response wheel, global positioning system receiver, magnetometer and magnetic torque rod were produced locally for the first time within the scope of the IMECE Project.
In this way, Turkey has become a country that has the capabilities to design and manufacture the avionics systems of a satellite from scratch.
IMECE's tagline
Weight: about 700 kilograms
Size: Approx. 2 meters x 3,1 meters
Shooting ability: Capability to capture an area 1000 kilometers long and 16,73 kilometers wide in one go and download the images taken to the ground station with a gross data rate of 320 megabytes/second.
Native: Ground station with an electro-optical camera, flight computer, electric propulsion, orientation and orbit determination, power and communication subsystems, star trackers, sun detector, response wheel, global positioning system receiver, magnetometer, antenna with a diameter of 7.3 meters.
Encrypted and secure communication with X-band and S-Band communication systems and flight computer software, orientation and trajectory software, analysis software, ground station software.