TUSAŞ and ROKETSAN Sign Deal to Develop HÜRSAT-2 Satellite
Türkiye’s two biggest defence manufacturers put their names to a satellite programme this week, not a missile or a drone. Turkish Aerospace (TUSAŞ) and ROKETSAN signed a project agreement on October 5 to develop HÜRSAT-2, the second phase of what the companies describe as Türkiye’s first satellite family designed from the outset to be built in series rather than one at a time.
The signing took place at the TUSAŞ pavilion during the 77th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Antalya, the first time Türkiye has hosted the event. Murat İkinci, ROKETSAN’s General Director, said the agreement reflected the country’s “growing technological weight” in space, while an official from the Presidency of Defence Industries (SSB) present at the signing said the goal was to put a Turkish-built satellite into orbit “with our own capabilities.”
What HÜRSAT Is Meant to Solve
Most Earth observation satellites are built as one-off or small-batch projects, each with its own design cycle, qualification campaign and supply chain. HÜRSAT is TUSAŞ’s attempt to break that pattern: a modular bus architecture that can be configured for payloads across a 200 to 650 kilogram mass range, intended to operate in sun-synchronous low Earth orbit with sub-meter resolution and wide-area imaging. The pitch is standard commercial-space logic — a common platform that can be adapted to different missions and customers, cutting both unit cost and the time between order and delivery.
HÜRSAT-1, the first satellite in the family, is currently in pre-launch testing at TUSAŞ facilities. Its performance in orbit is meant to validate the bus design and the serial-production concept before HÜRSAT-2 moves forward. According to TUSAŞ, HÜRSAT-2 is intended to shed weight relative to the first-generation satellite while keeping the same modular architecture, with the stated aim of building a repeatable, exportable product line rather than a single demonstrator. That would put HÜRSAT alongside Türkiye’s existing GÖKTÜRK reconnaissance satellites, which have logged more than 400,000 images since entering service but are not built on a serial-production line.
A Launch Vehicle to Match
The other half of the pitch is getting the satellites into space without relying on a foreign launch provider. ROKETSAN’s Şimşek family of launch vehicles is intended to carry HÜRSAT satellites to orbit — part of a broader push by Türkiye’s missile maker into space launch, alongside its work on conventional and precision-guided weapons. Şimşek-2, the version ROKETSAN has shown at recent defence exhibitions, is designed as a two-stage, liquid-fuelled vehicle capable of placing roughly 1,500 kilograms into sun-synchronous orbit above 700 kilometres; the company has indicated a first test flight around 2027. Until an indigenous launcher is flying operationally, Turkish satellites — including the GÖKTÜRK series and the Türksat 6A communications satellite — have gone up on foreign rockets.
Neither company disclosed a contract value for the HÜRSAT-2 agreement, and no launch date has been set. The project agreement covers development work between TUSAŞ and ROKETSAN; it is a step in an ongoing programme rather than a finished satellite or a confirmed launch slot.
Why It Matters Beyond Türkiye
Serial satellite manufacturing is a small club. Companies that can turn out small and medium satellites on a repeatable production line — rather than engineering each one from scratch — are positioned to compete for export and commercial orders, not just government programmes. For TUSAŞ, which already builds the KAAN fighter, HÜRKUŞ trainers and has just moved the AYAZ kamikaze drone into serial production, HÜRSAT is a bid to extend that industrial model into space, where it currently trails established players in the United States, Europe and China by a wide margin.
The pairing with ROKETSAN also matters. A domestic launch vehicle, even one that is still years from its first flight, would let Türkiye schedule launches on its own timeline rather than booking space on SpaceX or other foreign providers — the way most of its satellites have reached orbit to date. That independence is the explicit goal cited by SSB officials, and it mirrors a pattern seen across Turkish defence industry in the past decade, including ROKETSAN’s own expansion into export markets with systems like the BARBAROS coastal defence system: missiles, radars and now satellites developed to reduce reliance on imported systems.
Still Early
It is worth being precise about what was actually signed. This is a project agreement between two companies to develop HÜRSAT-2, not a satellite handover, a launch contract or a finished vehicle. HÜRSAT-1 has not yet flown. Şimşek has not yet flown. The programme’s success will depend on whether TUSAŞ can demonstrate the serial-production concept with the first satellite and whether ROKETSAN can get its launch vehicle to a reliable first flight on anything close to its stated schedule — a sequencing risk common to new launch programmes everywhere.
For now, the agreement signals where both companies want to take their space ambitions next, at an event — the IAC — that put Türkiye’s space sector in front of an international audience for the first time, and follows the groundwork laid by the Turkish Space Agency’s own roadmap for the sector.
Sources: Anadolu Agency.
