Türkiye built a communications satellite of its own, put it in orbit, and two years on it is still working. Türksat 6A passed that mark on 9 July, and the government marked the date with a tally of where the satellite has been and what it now carries.
By the ministry's count, 6A has flown some 192 million km (119 million miles) since launch, Transport and Infrastructure Minister Abdulkadir Uraloğlu said in a written statement. He put that at roughly 500 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon, or 250 round trips. The satellite has been holding its slot at 42 degrees east for about 437 days of active service, or some 10,416 hours, by his account.
The launch itself is a matter of record. A SpaceX Falcon 9 lifted 6A from Cape Canaveral on 9 July 2024, Türkiye time, and the satellite reached its final geosynchronous position at 42°E late that December. Commercial service began in April 2025, after a commissioning ceremony with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
What sets 6A apart is where it was made. More than 80% of the satellite is domestic, built by TÜBİTAK Uzay as prime contractor with Turkish Aerospace, Aselsan, CTech, and the operator Türksat. That work put Türkiye among a small group, the 11th country able to design, build, test, and run its own communications satellite. The bird is rated for at least 15 years in orbit.
For a country that started out buying its satellites, this is a long way traveled. Türksat 1B, launched in 1994, was foreign-built. The 6A carries Turkish engineering to a slot Türkiye has held for decades.
Coverage is the part Uraloğlu leaned on. Across the full Türksat fleet, six active satellites now, service reaches 5.5 billion people in 111 countries, the minister said. On 6A specifically, he counted 69 channels carried across 10 South Asian countries, a list that has grown to include Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka alongside earlier additions like India, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Those figures come from the ministry, and they describe the operator's own service, so read them as Türksat's account rather than independent measurement.
The eastward push is the strategic point. A satellite parked at 42°E can throw its footprint over a slice of Asia that Turkish broadcasters had little reach into before, and the ministry is pitching that as an export of Turkish satellite capacity, not just Turkish signal.
Next in line is Türksat 7A. The financing protocol was signed in June 2025, construction is meant to begin by the end of this year, and the ministry is targeting service in 2030, when 7A would take over from the aging Türksat 3A at the 42°E slot.
Two years is not a long life for a communications satellite. These birds are built to work for 15, and 6A is barely into its shift. But the anniversary gives Ankara a clean number to point to, and a working satellite in the sky that Turkish hands put there.