ISTANBUL
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday spoke over the phone with the country’s first space traveler Alper Gezeravci, who returned to Earth on Friday after completing a successful mission.
During a phone call with Gezeravci, Erdogan expressed hope that he would meet Gezeravci in person in Ankara to get more details about his more than two-week stay at the International Space Station (ISS).
“You will have very important tasks from now on,” Erdogan said, thanking him for successfully completing the mission.
Gezeravci said this journey was “an inspiring duty” to Türkiye and future generations.
Türkiye became the 22nd country to reach the ISS, he said, adding that his country reached there “the fastest, from the beginning of the training to the execution of the mission at the ISS.”
On Friday, SpaceX’s Dragon Capsule, carrying Italian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish space travelers, splashed down successfully off Florida at 8.30 a.m. Eastern Time (1330GMT).
The Axiom-3 space mission had been launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Jan. 19 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
Its crew docked at the ISS the next day on Jan. 20.
During their over-two-week stay on the station, Turkish Air Force pilot Col. Alper Gezeravci and his three crewmates from Spain, Italy, and Sweden carried out over 30 scientific experiments, about half of them by Gezeravci himself.
The crew’s scheduled return had been postponed several times due to bad weather.
Erdogan said after the crew landed that Türkiye would send many more people to space.
