Turkey’s first astronaut returned house to a hero’s welcome Monday, portrayed as a logo of the nation’s advances in know-how and aerospace.
Alper Gezeravci was greeted by bouquet-laden kids at Ankara’s Esenboga Airport as he returned from a private three-week mission to the Worldwide Area Station. In return, he handed out Turkish flags he had carried with him into space.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has intently adopted Gezeravci’s mission, declaring it a “new image of a rising, stronger and assertive Turkey,” after the nation marked its centenary final yr.
Erdogan has spoken a number of instances to Gezeravci, a 44-year-old former Turkish fighter pilot, since he left for Florida to arrange for the mission.
His space flight, for which Turkey paid roughly $55 million, was the third such journey organized by Houston-based Axiom Area with NASA and SpaceX.
The expedition is seen in Turkey as a supply of nationwide satisfaction and a spotlight of its technological development, particularly within the subject of aerospace and army growth equivalent to aerial drones.
Addressing journalists at Esenboga in entrance of a backdrop proclaiming “Turkey’s First Manned Area Mission,” Business and Expertise Minister Mehmet Fatih Kacir mentioned the mission was “a primary, nevertheless it won’t be the final. A brand new web page has been opened in space science and applied sciences for Turkey.”
Turkey established its personal space company in 2018, and mentioned it’s going to land on the moon by 2026.
Gezeravci was joined on the journey by Italian air pressure Col. Walter Villadei and Sweden’s Marcus Wandt, a former fighter pilot. They had been escorted by retired NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, who now works for Axiom Area.
The crew returned in a SpaceX capsule that parachuted into the Atlantic off the Florida coast on Friday.
Whereas in orbit, the astronauts performed science experiments and chatted with schoolchildren and officers from their international locations. They loved a number of additional days on the space station, ready for the climate to enhance within the splashdown zone.
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Turkey hails its first astronaut who returned from a 3-week mission to Worldwide Area Station (2024, February 12)
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