Turkey is starting preparations to send its citizen to the International Space Station (ISS), Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday following a cabinet meeting.

As Corr. TASS, any citizen under the age of 45 who wants to become the first Turkish cosmonaut can apply for the program at uzay.gov.tr. Applications will be accepted until June 23, 2022.

In February last year, the head of the Turkish Space Agency, Serdar Hussein Yildirim, told TASS that Ankara is likely to use the Russian Soyuz spacecraft for its cosmonaut flight, which is scheduled for 2023.

In 2021, Erdogan announced a national space program that includes training astronauts as well as sending his own rocket to the moon. Ankara intends to spend about $6 billion on this project. The legislative framework for this was prepared in the fall of 2016. This is one of the largest and most ambitious projects in modern Turkish history.

In September 2018, the Director General of Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin, in an interview with the Anatolian Agency, announced the possibility of Turkey joining the joint project of Russia and Kazakhstan to use the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Rogozin also announced the readiness of the Russian Federation to prepare the Turkish crew for a flight to the International Space Station in 2023, when the Republic of Turkey will celebrate the 100th anniversary of its founding.