Starlink invited to cover Turkey
October 2, 2023
By Chris Forrester
Last week it was India which said that it was about to grant permissions for Starlink to operate over the nation. Now Turkey says that Starlink can apply for licences.
The news follows on from an in-person meeting that Elon Musk had with Turkey’s President Erdogan in New York on September 18th. Erdogan reportedly wants Musk to build a Tesla factory in the country.
Musk, in one of his X/tweets on September 29th, thanked Erdogan for inviting him to attend Turkey’s TeknoFest (short for Teknofest Aerospace and Technology Festival) which ran until October 1st in Istanbul.
Musk said: “I look forward to attending in person next year, as well as discussing further opportunities for investment in Türkiye.”
Asked whether Türkiye and Starlink are close to sealing a deal, Ali Taha Koc, head of Türkiye’s Digital Transformation Office, said: “If they agree to obey [our] rules and regulations, why not?”
Meanwhile, SpaceX launched an additional 22 Starlink satellites from Florida on the evening of September 29th. It was the 69th orbital launch of the year for SpaceX.
According to astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell SpaceX has now launched 5,200 satellites in total of which 4,845 are in orbit, 4,815 are assessed as ‘working’ and 4,199 are in their correct orbital shells. The mega-constellation will continue to grow far into the future. SpaceX has permission to deploy 12,000 of the craft into LEO orbits and has applied for approval for another 30,000.