The battle of billionaires in space between Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk is ready to enter the new arena: satellite internet.
Amazon, a company that Mr. Bezos began as an online bookseller before three decades, is now a merchandising monster, owner of franchise James Bond, selling electronic gadgets such as Echo Smart Speakers and one of the most powerful cloud computing providers.
Perhaps it is not a surprise that Amazon is now launching the first few thousand satellites known as Project Kuiper to provide another way to remain attached in the modern world. The radiation market is currently dominated by the Rocket Company Elon Musk SpaceX, which operates a similar Starlink service. Starlink, with thousands of satellites in orbit and more launches almost every week, serves several millions of customers around the world.
The first attempt to send satellites to orbit, April 9, was postponed due to bad weather at the start site. On Monday, the company is ready to try again.
When it starts and how can I watch it?
The first 27 Kuiper Satellites projects are scheduled to lift on Monday between 19:00 and 21:00 East Time from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. They will fly to Atlas V, a missile created by United Launch Alliance, a common business between Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
Ula plans provide live coverage Starting 18:35, the company says that weather conditions are currently 70 percent favorable to start in time.
The spacecraft puts the Kuiper satellites in a circular orbit 280 miles above the surface. The satellite drive system then gradually increases this orbit to a height of 393 miles.
What is Kuiper’s project?
The Kuiper project will be the constellation of Internet satellites designed to provide high -speed data connection to almost every point on Earth. This will successfully require thousands of satellites, and Amazon’s goal is to operate more than 3,200 in the coming years.
The company will compete with SpaceX’s Starlink, a service that was originally sold primarily to residential customers.
While Kuiper also focuses on this market, especially in distant areas, it will also be integrated with the Amazon Web Services, the Cloud Computing offer that is popular with large corporations and governments around the world. This could be more attractive for businesses that include satellite images or weather forecasts that not only need to move a large amount of data over the Internet, but also make data calculations.
The ground station connects Kuiper satellites to web service infrastructure in a way that could also allow companies to communicate with their own remote equipment. For example, Amazon suggested that energy companies can use Kuiper to track and control distant wind farms or on the coastal drilling platforms.
In October 2023, two prototype Kuiper satellites were launched to test this technology. Amazon said the tests were successful. These prototypes should never be used in the operating constellation and after seven months they were inserted back into the atmosphere where they burned. Company said Since then, it has updated the proposals “every system and subsystem on board”.
“There is a big difference between running two satellites and running 3,000 satellites,” said Rajeev Badyal, Amazon manager in charge of Kuiper, in a promotional video before starting.
When will Amazon provide internet services from space?
Amazon told the Federal Commission in 2020 that the service would start after deploying its first 578 satellites. The company said it expects to connect customers with the Internet at the end of this year.
While fully functional constellations need thousands of satellites, the company can offer services in specific regions much less in orbit than later to expand to global coverage.
The approval of the FCC constellation came with a request that at least half of the satellites had to be deployed within July 30, 2026. Industry analysts argue that the company could obtain an extension if it had proven significant progress before.
Obtaining satellites in orbit also depends on the launch of missiles that occur as planned, which may be a problem unless there are enough missiles. Amazon also has to build hundreds of ground stations, hand over their signals to users.
