Over the next five years, three new heavy-lift rockets will put thousands of satellites into low earth orbit as part of Amazon’s Project Kuiper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The project aims to provide broadband connections using a constellation of 3,236 satellites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rival Starlink is said to have more than 2,300 satellites in orbit already.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The rockets will be made by Arianespace, Blue Origin – which was founded by Amazon owner Jeff Bezos – and United Launch Alliance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Amazon says Project Kuiper aims to provide high-speed, low-latency broadband to customers including households, businesses, government agencies, disaster relief operations, mobile operators, and other organisations “working in places without reliable internet connectivity”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like Elon Musk’s Starlink, users will connect to the internet via a terminal that communicates with the satellites. Amazon says its experience in shipping and making products like Echo and Kindle will be useful in producing and distributing these.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Project Kuiper will provide fast, affordable broadband to tens of millions of customers in unserved and underserved communities around the world,” said Dave Limp, senior vice-president for Amazon Devices & Services, in a statement announcing the deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
New rockets
Amazon plans 83 launches over the next five years, saying it constitutes “the largest commercial procurement of launch vehicles in history”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The firm plans two “prototype” missions later this year – but using a rocket made by ABL Space Systems, and not the three that will launch the bulk of the satellites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unlike Elon Musk’s Falcon 9 rockets, the three new rockets used for Project Kuiper’s launches are still in development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another satellite internet firm OneWeb, which is part-owned by the British government, recently decided to use SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets after losing access to the Russian-built Soyuz rockets it had been using, following the invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In total Mr Musk hopes to launch as many as 30,000 Starlink satellites into space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The value of this type of low-earth orbit satellite internet has already been demonstrated in Ukraine, where the United States Agency for International Development said, in conjunction with SpaceX, it had helped ship a total of 5,000 Starlink terminals to the country’s government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But, as low-earth orbit becomes increasingly congested, astronomers have complained that the light reflected from these satellites as they pass overhead increasingly disrupts the view of the night’s sky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Astro-photographer Mary McIntyre, said on Twitter: “The satellites are literally destroying our beautiful night sky.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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There are also concerns that so many satellites in orbit exacerbates the risk of collision and the problem of space junk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Over the next five years, three new heavy-lift rockets will put thousands of satellites into low earth orbit as part of Amazon’s Project Kuiper. The project aims to provide broadband connections using a constellation of 3,236 satellites. Rival Starlink is said to have more than 2,300 satellites in orbit already. The rockets will be made […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n