Amazon is launching its first Project Kuiper internet satellites to rival Starlink

Amazon is set to launch its first ever satellites on 6 October, as the corporate kicks off plans for an area internet service often called Project Kuiper that it hopes will rival SpaceX’s Starlink.

A pair of satellites known as KuiperSat-1 and KuiperSat-2 are scheduled to launch on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 7pm BST on 6 October. They are due to be positioned in an orbit 500 kilometres above Earth’s floor, to check out key elements of the Kuiper mega constellation, which is deliberate to encompass 3200 satellites.

“It’s really important to test the satellites before they can launch the rest of the constellation,” says Tim Farrar, a satellite tv for pc communications advisor within the UK. “This is a big step forward that we’ve been waiting a long time for.”

Project Kuiper satellites are designed to join to distant terminals on Earth, offering internet entry in distant or secluded places that in any other case lack connectivity.

Such house internet has been the goal of a number of corporations in recent times, most notably SpaceX within the US and Eutelsat’s OneNet within the UK. The former has already launched about 5000 satellites and boasts some 2 million customers, whereas OneNet has practically 650 satellites in orbit. Amazon is taking part in catch-up, says Farrar. “It’s going to be very challenging because they are four or five years behind SpaceX at least,” he says.

Amazon has dedicated to spending $10 billion on Kuiper. Last yr, it primarily purchased up all of the spare launch capability on the earth on each obtainable non-SpaceX rocket – seemingly in an try to keep away from giving cash to its main competitor.

However, the event of most of the rockets Amazon intends to use, comparable to ULA’s Vulcan Centaur, has been delayed. That sparked ire from a few of Amazon’s shareholders, who filed a lawsuit in August alleging a private rivalry between Amazon boss Jeff Bezos and SpaceX’s Elon Musk had seen Amazon overlook SpaceX’s Falcon rockets. Amazon dismissed the claims as “completely without merit”.

The delay has seen the corporate flip to the Atlas V rocket to launch its two prototype satellites, regardless of the rocket being a lot bigger than required. While not a lot is identified about every KuiperSat, they’re estimated to every be greater than 500 kilograms in mass, which is too giant for many small rockets in operation immediately, however undersized in contrast with the Atlas V’s large lifting capability of 7000 kilograms – a bit like sending small objects in giant cardboard containers, as Amazon’s retail arm often does.

“There isn’t really much on the table that’s at an intermediate rocket level,” says Jonathan McDowell on the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts. “Amazon really want to get these up now.”

Amazon says it should start manufacturing of its full Kuiper satellites later this yr and begin launching them within the first half of subsequent yr, with an early Kuiper service due to roll out within the second half of 2024. Eventually, it plans to provide internet speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second, comparable to fibre-optic broadband.

For this launch, every prototype satellite tv for pc will carry devices to check how customers on the bottom may join to Kuiper. One satellite tv for pc will even check out a technique to cut back the brightness of the satellite tv for pc within the night time sky, so as to forestall the longer term Kuiper mega constellation from being a hazard to astronomers, however Amazon hasn’t revealed precisely how this may work.

Chris Johnson, house regulation adviser on the Secure World Foundation within the US, says there are nonetheless points to resolve relating to each the affect of mega constellations on astronomy and managing such giant numbers of satellites in orbit to keep away from collisions. “Global constellations are here now and the train has left the station,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean the game is up. These things can still be regulated.”