Amazon announces deal with rocket companies to launch internet satellites

Amazon is moving its business into the exosphere, with plans to deploy more than 3,000 satellites to broadcast internet connectivity across the planet. This Tuesday (5), the company announced agreements with three rocket companies that will launch these satellites.

The deal includes two veteran rocket builders — United Launch Alliance, which is a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, and European company Arianespace — as well as Blue Origin, the rocket company started by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, which is still working to develop a rocket capable of reaching orbit.

Bezos remains Amazon’s chief executive.

The contracts include a total of up to 83 releases, which Amazon is calling one of the biggest commercial release deals ever signed. Releases will take place over about five years.

All three rockets that Amazon plans to use for these missions are not yet operational, but are expected to enter service later this year or 2023. Financial details were not released.

Notably absent from the vendor list is Elon Musk’s SpaceX. While SpaceX has worked to dominate the commercial launch industry with its reusable rockets, Amazon’s space-based internet business, called Project Kuiper, is expected to compete directly with SpaceX’s own satellite internet business, Starlink.

Starlink is well ahead of Project Kuiper and other competitors, as the company has deployed more than 2,000 satellites and signed over 145,000 customers worldwide, SpaceX said in January.

It is not uncommon, however, for a space company to launch a satellite onto a competitor’s rocket. SpaceX has signed an agreement to launch satellites for UK-based OneWeb, which is building yet another constellation of internet satellites in low Earth orbit, the orbit area that extends some 1,200 miles from the Earth’s surface. .

OneWeb made this deal after its previous launch contract, which involved using Russian rockets, was canceled amid the Ukrainian war.

Bezos and Musk, however, are believed to have a particularly strained relationship, with Musk often touting his barbs to Bezos on Twitter and his companies embroiled in a tense competition for high-profile contracts with NASA and the US military.

Amazon’s Project Kuiper has been in smooth development for years. Federal regulators have given approval for the company to launch its satellites in 2020, and few concrete updates have been shared since then.

Under the agreement announced Tuesday, Arianespace, which has orbital rockets in operation but plans to use its upcoming Ariane 6 rocket for Project Kuiper launches, has signed an agreement for 18 missions.

ULA took the lion’s share of the business, with plans for 38 launches. The ULA will use its Vulcan Centaur rocket, which was scheduled to fly in early 2022 but was delayed by development issues with the engines it will use — the BE-4 engine, which will be built by Blue Origin of Bezos.

The Vulcan Centaur will be able to fly for the first time later this year.

Blue Origin will also use the BE-4 for its New Glenn rocket, which is now planned to enter service in 2023. Amazon has signed a deal for 12 launches on that vehicle when it’s ready to fly.

It is unclear how far Project Kuiper is in the development process. These constellations involve sophisticated satellite technologies as well as complex ground terminals that can track the satellites that broadcast the Internet as they roam the planet.

“We still have a lot of work to do, but the team has continued to achieve milestone after milestone in all aspects of our satellite system,” Amazon Senior Vice President of Devices and Services Dave Limp said in a statement.

Source: CNN Brasil

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