Being Turkey’s second communications satellite sent to space, Turksat 1C was successfully placed into orbit and positioned at 31.3°E 25 years ago on July 10, 1996.
Turksat 1C was launched by Arianespace atop an Ariane-44L H10-3 launch vehicle from ELA-2 at the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana.
The satellite was designed to serve for ten years but it ended up serving for a total of 14 years after being evaluated and found to be in good condition in terms of productivity.
After serving for 14 years, Turksat 1C was retired on September 23, 2010.
On July 16, 2008, all traffic on Turksat 1C was transferred to Turksat 3A, which was launched on June 13, 2008 and its television broadcast was terminated on October 3, 2010.
The retired 1C satellite was sent to a space dump in accordance with the standards set by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
Turksat 1C communications satellite
Turksat 1C was built within the scope of a project aiming to form an instant network with two geosynchronous satellites that is supervised by the companies Türksat A.Ş. in Turkey and Aérospatiale of France.
Weighing 3,060 kilograms, the satellite covered Turkey, Europe and Central Asia.
The communications payload of the satellite consisted of 16 Ku band transponders with eight backups, nine with 36Mhz, two with 54Mhz and five 72Mhz bandwidth.
