TL;DR
The Moon is about to get another visitor. Turkey has booked a SpaceX Falcon 9 to carry its first lunar spacecraft, a roughly 3.6-ton orbiter called TLM-1, with a launch window of April to June 2027. If it arrives, Turkey would become the ninth nation to operate its own payload at the Moon, and the orbiter is the first of two missions: the second is meant to put a Turkish lander and rover on the surface. For people, the bigger story is that the Moon is getting crowded: one more national Moon program joins the 2027 launch calendar, in the same years NASA plans to start a permanent base near the south pole. The account so far is a secondary report quoting the project manager. To see our odds on when Turkey reaches lunar orbit and lands, and the timeline of breakthroughs on the way to a working Moon base, subscribe.
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