Turkmenistan's first telecommunications satellite has been put into orbit.
The satellite was sent into space on an unmanned SpaceX rocket, which blasted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida on April 27.
The satellite is due to relay television broadcasts and other services to more than 1.2 billion people in Central Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, according to Thales Alenia Space,
Turkmenistan's first telecommunications satellite has been put into orbit.
The satellite was sent into space on an unmanned SpaceX rocket, which blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force State in Florida on April 27.
The satellite is due to relay television broadcasts and other services to more than 1.2 billion people in Central Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, according to Thales Alenia Space, a joint venture of Thales SA and Finmeccanica SpA, which built the satellite.
"The launch is a vital first step in Turkmenistan's development as a space nation," Jean Loic Galle, president and chief executive of Thales Alenia Space, said in a SpaceX webcast video before launch.
The April 27 launch was the 18th for Space Exploration Technologies, the privately owned, California-based company known as SpaceX, and its second in less than two weeks.
