BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 11. Launch of Türkiye's first IMECE observation satellite, scheduled for Tuesday, has been postponed, the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye said in a Twitter post, TurkicWorld reports via TASS.

The reasons for the delay were not specified.

"The operation to launch the IMECE satellite has been postponed after SpaceX reported that it was impossible to do so today. The exact date and time of the launch, postponed so far by one day, will be announced additionally," the tweet said.

Previously, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in his Twitter post that the first Turkish observation satellite would be launched into space on April 11.

IMECE is an earth observation satellite designed and developed by TÜBİTAK Space Technologies Research Institute (TÜBİTAK UZAY) and produced in Türkiye to provide high resolution imagery.

The IMECE Satellite Project, supported by Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK), started in January 2017. In June 2020, the assembly integration activities of the spacecraft's thermal structural efficiency module was completed, and tests for the vibration on the spacecraft started. The assembly activities of the flight module followed those tests.

Projected for a mission duration of five years, the spacecraft has a mass of 800 kg.