Turkey plans to send a rover to the moon by the end of the decade using a domestically built rocket engine that will first fly to the moon in a test mission in 2023.

Petersburg, Russia, on Tuesday (June 16), Serdar Hüseyin Yildirim, president of the Turkish Space Agency (TUA), discussed details of the country's space program, which was officially unveiled by Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in February this year. .

The rover, which will be launched in 2028 or 2029, according to Yildirim, will land softly on the moon and collect scientific data on its surface. .

The rocket that launches the moon rover will be domestically built, using a hybrid engine that is currently being developed in Turkey, Yildirim said.

According to a report by the Turkish Anadolu Press Agency, the 2023 mission will make a rough landing on the moon, which will help Turkish engineers to gather data for the soft landing in the late 2020s. .

Turkey also plans to send a Turkish citizen to the International Space Station in the coming years to conduct scientific experiments. .

Turkey's National Space Program, published in February this year, also foresees the establishment of a local Turkish spaceport and the development of a domestic regional positioning and timing satellite system. .

The space program will allow Turkey to join an exclusive club of only a handful of countries capable of pulling off complex space exploration projects on their own