SpaceX launches first Turkish satellite IMECE into space

Türkiye on Saturday successfully launched its new and first indigenous high-resolution Earth observation satellite IMECE into space.

The Turkish-made pioneering satellite was blasted off early on Saturday from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 06:48 GMT.

The launch marks the first time that Türkiye will have an electro-optical satellite camera with sub-meter resolution in orbit.

The IMECE's orbit will be sun-synchronous at an altitude of 680 km and serve in the areas of defense, disaster management, environment and urbanization, and agriculture and forestry.

IMECE is a remote sensing satellite produced with local resources of up to 60 percent by the Space Technologies Research Institute of Türkiye's Scientific and Technological Research Council (TUBITAK). It is capable of taking images from all around world with high-resolution electro-optical camera.

Transporter-7 is the seventh small-satellite rideshare mission that SpaceX has launched to date.

Transporter-7 had been scheduled to launch on April 12, but SpaceX announced that it was pushing the try back by two days to allow more time for pre-launch checks and to give the weather a chance to improve. The company tried to launch on April 14, but scrubbed the attempt due to bad weather with about 30 seconds left on the countdown clock.