They are celebrating in Ankara for the “first satellite built in Turkey”. Turkish Transport and Infrastructure Minister Abduldakir Uraloglu announced early Thursday that Turksat 6A, the neighbor’s first domestically built telecommunications satellite, had completed its fifth and final launch.

“The fifth and final launch, which lasted for 5.5 minutes and started at 23:58 (2058 GMT), was successfully completed,” the Turkish minister wrote on X.

“Everything is running smoothly and under control on our space journey to orbit”he added.

“Turksat 6A was launched last week into space as a result of 10 years of work, bringing the number of active Türkiye satellites to nine” reports Anadolu.

After successfully passing all tests, Turksat 6A was launched into space on the (Elon Musk-owned) Space X’s Falcon 9 rocket on July 8.

“With the experience of the Turkish engineers who produced Turksat 6A, Turkey has become one of the few countries that can produce communications satellites and finally it looks like it can become a satellite exporter” comments the Turkish agency.

Turksat 1C, the successor to the first communications satellite, Turksat 1B, was launched in 1996, followed by Turksat 2A in 2001, Turksat 3A in 2008, Turksat 4A in 2014, Turksat 4B in 2015, and Turksat 5A and Turksat 5A and 5B in 2021.