Turksat and Airbus companies signed an agreement for the production of Turksat 5A and Turksat 5B Communication Satellites. “We are pleased to see Turksat among us as the new Eurostar customer for the fleet's most powerful satellites,” said Nicolas Chamussy, Airbus Space Systems President for the ceremony at the Istanbul Global Sat Show. “We were the first to offer full-electric propulsion technology to this market for satellites this size and capacity, and we will ensure that the Turksat spacecraft will be launched at the most cost-effective price,” he said.

Turksat 5A will have coverage across Turkey, the Middle East, Europe, North Africa and South Africa. The nominal launching weight will be 3 thousand 500 kg and the electric power will be 12 kW. The Türksat 5A sat is planned to be delivered to the orbit in 2020.

The Turksat 5B satellite, which will be operating at 42 ° east longitude, will work on Ku and Ka bands. With HTS (High Throughput Satellite) capacity, the satellite will provide a capacity of more than 50 Gbps through 73 beams through a wide coverage of a large part of the Middle East and Africa. The nominal launch weight will be 4 thousand 500 kg and the electric power will be 15 kW. It is planned to be delivered to the orbit in 2021.

The satellites will be constructed at the facilities of Airbus in the UK and France with the contributions of Turkish engineers. Both sats are scheduled to have a service life of more than 15 years.