The battle for billionaires in the space between Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk is ready to enter a new arena: satellite internet.
Amazon, the company that started Mr Bezos three decades ago as an online bookseller, is now a merchandising colossus, the owner of the James Bond -Franchise, a seller of electronic gadgets such as Echo Smart Speakers and one of the most powerful providers of Cloud Computing.
So maybe it is no surprise that Amazon is now launching the first few thousand satellites known as a Kuiper project to offer another option to stay connected in the modern world. The market for raying high-speed internet to the land of Orbit is currently dominated by the SpaceX Rocket Company by Elon Musk, which operates a similar service, Starlink. Starlink, with thousands of satellites in a job around the earth and launched almost every week, has already served several million customers around the world.
On Monday the company was sent first 27 satellites to the room. Their journey to their last jobs continues.
Amazon had no immediate comments after the launch. It takes many hours, if not days, before the company contacts and contact all 27 satellites and knows if they are operational.
When the launch and how can I view it?
The satellite increased on Monday at 7:01 pm Eastern Time by Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. They were worn by an Atlas V, a rocket made by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
Later in the evening, the spacecraft will implement the Kuiper satellites in a circular track at 280 miles above the surface. The drive system of the satellites will then gradually increase that job to a height of 393 miles.
What is Project Kuiper?
Project Kuiper will be a constellation of internet satellites that are intended to offer high-speed data connections to almost every point on earth. Doing this successfully, requires thousands of satellites, and the goal of Amazon is to serve more than 3,200 in the coming years.
The company will compete with SpaceX's Starlink, a service that was originally sold mainly to residential customers.
Although Kuiper also strives for that market, especially in remote areas, it will also be integrated with Amazon Web Services, the Cloud Computing offer from the company, which is popular with large companies and governments around the world. This can make it more attractive for companies with satellite images or weather forecast that not only have to move large amounts of data via the internet, but also to perform calculations about the data.
Ground stations will connect the Kuiper satellites with the Web Services infrastructure in a way that could also enable companies to communicate with their own external equipment. For example, Amazon has suggested that energy companies can use Kuiper to check and check external wind farms or offshore drilling platforms.
In October 2023, two prototype Kuiper -Satellites were launched to test the technology. Amazon said the tests were successful. Those prototypes were never intended to serve in the operational constellation, and after seven months they were reversed in the atmosphere where they burned. The company said it has since updated the designs of “every system and sub -system on board.”
“There is a big difference between launching two satellites and the launch of 3000 satellites,” said Rajeev Badyal, an Amazon director responsible for Kuiper, in a promotional video prior to the launch.
When does Amazon offer internet services from space?
Amazon told the Federal Communications Commission in 2020 that the service would start after it had deployed its first 578 satellites. The company has said that it expects customers to connect with the internet later this year.
Although a fully functional zodiac sign needs thousands of satellites, the company can offer service in specific regions with much less in a job around the earth before he later expands more global coverage.
The approval of the FCC of the constellation came with a requirement that at least half of the satellites had to be deployed on July 30, 2026. Industrial analysts say that the company could get an extension if it has shown substantial progress by that time.
Getting the satellites in the job in the track also depends on rocket launches that take place on schedule, which can be a problem if there are not enough rockets available. Amazon also has to build hundreds of ground stations to pass on their signals to users.
Is space too busy for both SpaceX and Amazon?
In 2000 there were fewer than 1,000 satellites in the earth.
Nowadays, SpaceX only operates more than 7,000 Starlink -Satellites and hopes to increase that to 42,000.
Other mega sets, including Project Kuiper, can multiply the number of satellites in the region called Low-Earth Orbit several times and will require careful orbital traffic control to prevent them from being with each other or with other debris in low earth Orbit.
But satellites such as Kuiper and Starlink do not stay in low earth indefinitely. At the end of their lifespan, they are deliberately taken out of a job to burn on in the atmosphere. Even if they fail completely, only air resistance will attract them to their destruction within a few years, so that they will not add to the long -lasting mess of the room.
What other rockets are Kuiper launching around a job?
In April 2022, Amazon announced that it bought a maximum of 83 launches with Kuiper satellites, on a series of rockets. Some fly on New Glenn, a powerful, extensive rocket made by the spacecraft of Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin. Others would rise on a vulcan, a new rocket from United Launch Alliance. Other batches will travel at the Ariane 6 of Arianespace, a European Rocket Company.
These three vehicles are new and have only been launched a handful of times.
In December 2023, Amazon also bought three Falcon 9 launches for 2025 from SpaceX, his direct competitor for Kuiper. That decision was charged months after a pension fund Amazon had been charged and said that the board of the company had acted in bad faith in arranging almost all Kuiper launches on the unproven missiles while ignoring the Falcon 9, the dominant rocket in modern space travel and probably the less expensive.
