Kuiper vs Starlink: Bezos and Musk's space rivalry enters new orbit
CAPE CANAVERAL, April 29 — Amazon yesterday launched its first batch of Project Kuiper internet satellites, marking the start of its push to rival Elon Musk's Starlink.
The mission, called Kuiper Atlas 1, lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 7:00 pm local time (2300 GMT), aboard a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket that will carry 27 satellites into orbit.
A previous attempt was scrubbed earlier this month due to bad weather.
Project Kuiper, a subsidiary of the online retail giant founded by Jeff Bezos, is playing catch-up with Starlink — SpaceX's sprawling network of internet satellites that has reshaped the sector and handed Musk significant geopolitical clout.
The US$10 billion (RM43.3 billion) initiative plans to deploy 3,200 satellites into low Earth orbit — the region of space up to 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometres) above the planet — with hopes of going live later this year.
Pricing has not yet been revealed, but Amazon has pledged it will align with its reputation as a low-cost retailer.
'Atlas V is on its way to orbit to take those 27 Kuiper satellites, put them on their way, and really start this new era in internet connectivity,' said ULA's Caleb Weiss.
With yesterday's launch, Amazon formally enters a crowded and fast-growing field that includes not just Starlink but other emerging players in the satellite internet race.
SpaceX launched the first batch of Starlink satellites in 2019 and now boasts more than 6,750 operational units, serving over five million customers worldwide — by far the sector's dominant force.
Starlink has also provided crucial internet access in disaster and war zones, including Morocco after its devastating 2023 earthquake and on the frontlines in Ukraine's war against Russia.
Amazon plans to accelerate launches in the coming months and years, with more than 80 flights booked through United Launch Alliance (a Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture), France's Arianespace, Bezos's own Blue Origin, and even Musk's SpaceX.
Its satellites will gradually join the swelling ranks of low Earth orbit, alongside Starlink, Europe's OneWeb, and China's Guowang constellation.
The increasing crowding of this orbital neighbourhood has sparked concerns about congestion, potential collisions, and disruptions to astronomical observations.
The expanding role of private companies in space has also raised thorny political questions, especially as Musk's influence stretches beyond business into politics and diplomacy.
Musk has sent mixed signals on Starlink's future role in Ukraine, where it remains vital to Kyiv's war effort — a conflict that Musk ally US President Donald Trump has vowed to bring to an end. — AFP
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Star
2 hours ago
- The Star
Elon Musk returns to his tech empire, facing questions of inattention
Elon Musk recently swapped his Dark MAGA hat and government 'Tech Support' garb for his old 'Occupy Mars' T-shirt, a reference to his rocket company SpaceX's mission to colonize the red planet. He embarked on a media blitz, granting interviews to news outlets he had previously avoided and saying he was focused on SpaceX and discussing his electric automaker Tesla. And on social media, he posted that he was again spending '24/7 at work' and sleeping in his companies' factories and server rooms. As Musk steps away from Washington and his Department of Government Efficiency, President Donald Trump's 'first buddy' is shifting back to his role as a business titan. But that move is not likely to come easy after Musk spent months backing Trump's presidential campaign and dismantling parts of the federal government, raising concerns that he had become an absentee leader at his various enterprises, including SpaceX, Tesla, artificial intelligence company xAI and the social media platform X. Musk's time in government has been a decidedly mixed bag for his business empire. Tesla is particularly vulnerable after Musk's popularity nose-dived when he slashed government jobs. Tesla dealerships became the target of protests as sales and profit fell. What's more, the Republican budget bill now before the Senate would gut subsidies and policies that promote electric vehicles. Tesla's stock has dropped about 14% this year, wiping around US$180bil off its market value. Some of Musk's companies have benefited from his proximity to the White House, with Trump at one point promoting Tesla cars on the White House lawn and SpaceX harvesting more government tie-ups with Starlink, its satellite internet service. X remains a powerful megaphone for Musk's and Trump's supporters. And Trump is a valuable ally with policy power who oversees agencies that regulate Musk's businesses. But Musk is the face of his companies, and his protracted time in Washington has raised alarms over how committed he is to his businesses. Some former workers at SpaceX and elsewhere have questioned his absence from the companies. Overall, it's unclear if the tech billionaire's Washington maneuvers will lead to long-term advantages for them. 'It became a mission critical thing to get the CEO back in the office,' said Eric Talley, a professor at Columbia Law School. 'It's not a moment too soon, quite frankly.' How much time Musk will spend with his companies and outside Washington remains unclear. At a news conference in the Oval Office with Trump on Friday, Musk called his departure from the government 'not the end of DOGE but really the beginning' and said he would continue to visit 'and be a friend and an adviser to the president.' 'Elon's really not leaving,' Trump said. 'He's going to be back and forth.' Musk did not address how he would spend his time or how the change would affect his companies. He did not respond to an emailed request for comment. Tesla and SpaceX also did not respond to requests for comment. X and xAI declined to comment. At SpaceX, Musk's absence had been felt in recent months. In May, Dylan Small, a former mechanic at the rocket company, posted on X that 'morale is low' and 'people are burned out.' 'Your presence used to drive a fire in the team,' Small wrote to Musk. 'Please come back and walk the floor.' In a message to The New York Times, Small said SpaceX's work was largely the result of employees feeling 'inspired,' with Musk playing 'a huge role in that.' Since the start of Trump's term, Musk has posted almost 1,000 times on X about SpaceX, which was half of the nearly 2,000 times he posted about DOGE, according to a tally by the Times. In that time, SpaceX has held two test launches of Starship, the rocket that Musk hopes will get humans to Mars, including one Tuesday. Last week, Musk gave an interview to The Washington Post – a news outlet he has typically shunned – and emphasized that he was 'physically here' for SpaceX before the Starship test launch from the company's Starbase rocket facility in South Texas. The launch ended in an explosion, but Musk still made a point to declare his presence. He reshared videos of himself in the SpaceX control center, as well as interviews with reporters and influencers talking about space travel. At Tesla, Musk's level of disengagement from the business became clear in April. He had seldom visited Tesla's offices or factories since Trump's inauguration but showed up at one of the company's offices in Palo Alto, California, a few days ahead of an earnings call that month, according to two people familiar with his travel. During the visit, Musk asked about the impact of Trump's tariffs on Tesla and was briefed on the effects and the company's supply chain vulnerabilities, two people familiar with the meeting said. The timing of his question raised concerns from some attendees, since Trump had begun announcing tariffs two months earlier in February. Days after Musk's visit, Tesla reported that its vehicle sales fell 13% in the first quarter from a year earlier, as profit plunged to its lowest level in four years. New tariffs on imported auto parts have added to the financial pressures facing the company. Musk's political activities alienated buyers, said Matthew LaBrot, who worked in sales at Tesla in California. It became 'a grind every day to sell a car when that did not used to be the case,' said LaBrot, who was fired after he set up a website critical of Musk. 'A lot of it was Elon.' Tesla executives have told people in recent months that Musk was not as involved in day-to-day details of the operations and was dialing in remotely for meetings more frequently than before his stint at DOGE, two people with knowledge of the conversations said. A Tesla board member has sometimes stepped in to help fill in the gaps for Musk, one of them said. Tesla, which faces stiff competition from Chinese electric carmakers such as BYD, has tried to diversify more into AI and robotics. Musk has said the company would launch a ride-hailing service this month in Austin, Texas, with fully autonomous vehicles. The company has also aimed to start making a less expensive car, though it is unclear how different it will be from Tesla's existing vehicles. During his time in government, Musk appeared to keep an eye on the fast-evolving field of AI. He talked up xAI, his startup, and posted hundreds of times on X about Grok, the chatbot made by the startup. He also continued waging a legal battle against Sam Altman, who leads OpenAI and is a key rival in the AI industry. In March, Musk sold X to xAI, merging the two companies. Last month, the combined company announced a tender offer, which allows employees to cash out some of their equity by selling the shares back to the company at a prearranged price, according to internal documents seen by the Times. The tender offer is tentatively scheduled for this month and valued the combined company at about US$113bil, according to the documents. On Wednesday, Linda Yaccarino, X's CEO, held an employee meeting to rally workers around the idea that merging with xAI had led to the best teams and technology, two people familiar with the discussion said. That day, she posted on X to celebrate a partnership to integrate Grok into the messaging service Telegram. Pavel Durov, Telegram's founder, also posted about the deal. 'Elon Musk and I have agreed to a 1-year partnership to bring xAI's chatbot Grok to our billion+ users and integrate it across all Telegram apps,' he wrote. A few hours later, Musk made clear he was still the boss. 'No deal has been signed,' he posted on X. – ©2025 The New York Times Company This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
The Star
2 hours ago
- The Star
Hey chatbot, is this true? AI 'factchecks' sow misinformation
WASHINGTON: As misinformation exploded during India's four-day conflict with Pakistan, social media users turned to an AI chatbot for verification – only to encounter more falsehoods, underscoring its unreliability as a fact-checking tool. With tech platforms reducing human fact-checkers, users are increasingly relying on AI-powered chatbots – including xAI's Grok, OpenAI's ChatGPT, and Google's Gemini – in search of reliable information. "Hey @Grok, is this true?" has become a common query on Elon Musk's platform X, where the AI assistant is built in, reflecting the growing trend of seeking instant debunks on social media. But the responses are often themselves riddled with misinformation. Grok – now under renewed scrutiny for inserting "white genocide", a far-right conspiracy theory, into unrelated queries – wrongly identified old video footage from Sudan's Khartoum airport as a missile strike on Pakistan's Nur Khan airbase during the country's recent conflict with India. Unrelated footage of a building on fire in Nepal was misidentified as "likely" showing Pakistan's military response to Indian strikes. "The growing reliance on Grok as a fact-checker comes as X and other major tech companies have scaled back investments in human fact-checkers," McKenzie Sadeghi, a researcher with the disinformation watchdog NewsGuard, told AFP. "Our research has repeatedly found that AI chatbots are not reliable sources for news and information, particularly when it comes to breaking news," she warned. 'Fabricated' NewsGuard's research found that 10 leading chatbots were prone to repeating falsehoods, including Russian disinformation narratives and false or misleading claims related to the recent Australian election. In a recent study of eight AI search tools, the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University found that chatbots were "generally bad at declining to answer questions they couldn't answer accurately, offering incorrect or speculative answers instead." When AFP fact-checkers in Uruguay asked Gemini about an AI-generated image of a woman, it not only confirmed its authenticity but fabricated details about her identity and where the image was likely taken. Grok recently labeled a purported video of a giant anaconda swimming in the Amazon River as "genuine", even citing credible-sounding scientific expeditions to support its false claim. In reality, the video was AI-generated, AFP fact-checkers in Latin America reported, noting that many users cited Grok's assessment as evidence the clip was real. Such findings have raised concerns as surveys show that online users are increasingly shifting from traditional search engines to AI chatbots for information gathering and verification. The shift also comes as Meta announced earlier this year it was ending its third-party fact-checking program in the United States, turning over the task of debunking falsehoods to ordinary users under a model known as "Community Notes", popularised by X. Researchers have repeatedly questioned the effectiveness of "Community Notes" in combating falsehoods. 'Biased answers' Human fact-checking has long been a flashpoint in a hyperpolarized political climate, particularly in the United States, where conservative advocates maintain it suppresses free speech and censors right-wing content – something professional fact-checkers vehemently reject. AFP currently works in 26 languages with Facebook's fact-checking program, including in Asia, Latin America, and the European Union. The quality and accuracy of AI chatbots can vary, depending on how they are trained and programmed, prompting concerns that their output may be subject to political influence or control. Musk's xAI recently blamed an "unauthorized modification" for causing Grok to generate unsolicited posts referencing "white genocide" in South Africa. When AI expert David Caswell asked Grok who might have modified its system prompt, the chatbot named Musk as the "most likely" culprit. Musk, the South African-born billionaire backer of President Donald Trump, has previously peddled the unfounded claim that South Africa's leaders were "openly pushing for genocide" of white people. "We have seen the way AI assistants can either fabricate results or give biased answers after human coders specifically change their instructions," Angie Holan, director of the International Fact-Checking Network, told AFP. "I am especially concerned about the way Grok has mishandled requests concerning very sensitive matters after receiving instructions to provide pre-authorized answers." – AFP
The Star
2 hours ago
- The Star
South Korean delivery workers allowed rare pause in services to vote in snap election
FILE PHOTO: Delivery trucks for e-commerce retailer Coupang leave a distribution centre in Seoul, South Korea, June 21, 2018. Picture taken June 21, 2018. REUTERS/Josh Smith/File Photo SEOUL (Reuters) -South Korean e-commerce and courier companies agreed to a rare halt of their delivery services on Tuesday to allow busy delivery workers time to cast their ballot in the country's snap presidential election after pressure from unions and activists. Asia's fourth-largest economy has a highly tuned e-commerce sector and South Koreans typically rely on couriers to deliver everything from fresh food to clothing, often in a matter of hours, with the service normally available throughout the year. South Korea's biggest e-commerce platform Coupang, agreed to halt express deliveries for the first time since it launched in 2014, joining other local delivery services such as CJ Logistics and Hanjin Logistics. "Rocket delivery will be paused during the day on June 3," New York-listed Coupang said in a notice on its platform, pausing deliveries between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. Most of the tens of thousands of delivery workers in South Korea are considered gig workers or self-employed and do not enjoy the same legal protections as permanent employees. The job is also notorious for long working hours and a heavy workload, with couriers complaining they have seen few of the benefits from an improvement in labour rights in other sectors. The agreement to temporarily halt services during the polls, was positively received by some workers. "I welcome the decision. But on the other hand, it is a little regrettable that night drivers cannot rest," said Cho Shin-hwan, a Coupang courier, who had to work on past elections. Nearly 8 in 10 eligible voters in South Korea voted in the last presidential election in 2022, a far higher turnout than recent elections held in other democracies such as the United States and Japan. Presidential election days are designated as a national holiday in South Korea to encourage workers to vote, with polls for the snap election staying open between 6 a.m. (Monday 2100 GMT) and 8 p.m. (1100 GMT) on Tuesday. "Those affected worked hard to achieve this," said Kim Eun-jung, Deputy Secretary General at the People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, a non-governmental body, highlighting how delivery workers were excluded from current labour protection laws. The June 3 presidential election was called after the Constitutional Court ousted president Yoon Suk Yeol earlier this year for his short-lived imposition of martial law on December 3. (Reporting by Hyunsu YimEditing by Ed Davies and Michael Perry)
