Amazon Doubles Project Kuiper Satellite Fleet in Race to Catch Up to SpaceX's Starlink
An Atlas V rocket roared off Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 6:54 a.m. ET Monday, carrying 27 Amazon Kuiper satellites to low-Earth orbit. The flight, dubbed Kuiper 2, doubles Amazon's constellation to 54 operational broadband satellites.
Project Kuiper is Amazon's $10-billion-plus answer to Elon Musk's Starlink. The commerce giant is planning a network of 3,236 satellites to deliver high-speed, dependable internet to people everywhere, especially in communities traditional providers have left unconnected or under-served.
Amazon's June 23 liftoff unfolded without any issues, a week after engineers scrubbed the first attempt because of a rocket booster issue. The United Launch Alliance' Atlas V, on one of its last commercial flights, released the satellite batch about three hours after liftoff, handing control to Amazon's Kuiper mission center in Redmond, Washington.
To complete its 3,236-satellite network, Amazon has lined up roughly 80 launches in the coming years: eight more Atlas Vs, 38 on its Vulcan Centaur replacement, plus rides on Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rockets and even Musk's SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets. With a Kirkland factory in Washington cranking out five satellites a day, Amazon says it could power on its first customer terminals later this year.
Amazon has until mid-2026 to launch half its fleet under FCC rules, making every launch crucial to meet this goal.
Catching SpaceX won't be easy, though. Starlink averages more than one launch a week and obviously has a major head start in hardware, ground stations and market share. Still, Amazon's retail footprint and deep pockets give Project Kuiper a leg up, especially in markets where Starlink terminals remain expensive or back-ordered.
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