Amazon launched its first batch of satellites into orbit on Monday within the firm’s first step towards rivaling Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite tv for pc constellation.
Amazon’s Undertaking Kuiper despatched 27 satellites up in a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Area Pressure Station in Florida.
The primary batch of satellites will type the start of a mega constellation that may present high-speed and reasonably priced web service to virtually any location on Earth.
Undertaking Kuiper posted on X that the satellites’ preliminary deployment and activation sequences are continuing as deliberate.
The Kuiper group will handle the constellation from its 24/7 mission operations middle in Redmond, Washington.
“While this is the first step in a much longer journey to launch the rest of our low Earth orbit constellation, it represents an incredible amount of invention and hard work,” CEO and president of Amazon Andy Jassy stated in a put up on X.
Amazon, based by Jeff Bezos, plans to ship greater than 3,200 satellites into orbit.
The corporate has already deliberate greater than 80 launches.
Musk and his firm SpaceX at the moment dominate the mega-constellation market.
Since 2019, the corporate has launched greater than 8,000 Starlink satellites, with greater than 7,000 nonetheless orbiting over 300 miles above Earth.
The Undertaking Kuiper satellites will journey at a velocity of greater than 17,000 miles per hour on orbit and circle the planet about each 90 minutes.
Whereas the satellites orbit, the group will ship knowledge from the web, via its floor infrastructure, as much as the satellites, and all the way down to buyer terminal antennas, after which repeat the journey within the different course.
Amazon expects to start delivering its web service to clients later this 12 months.
Fox Enterprise Digital’s Alexandra Koch contributed to this report.
