Amazon’s Project Kuiper ready to launch as Musk’s Starlink rules satellite internet

Amazon’s satellite internet venture, Project Kuiper, is set to launch its first batch of satellites into space Wednesday evening. 

If all goes as planned, it will mark a significant milestone in its race against competitors like Elon Musk’s Starlink to expand broadband access and tap into a pool of customers seeking alternative internet providers. 

Project Kuiper, formed as a part of Amazon in 2019 and based in the Puget Sound region, ultimately plans a constellation of 3,200 satellites that circle the earth at relatively low altitudes. The low-Earth orbit satellites will create end-to-end connectivity and make it easier for people living in rural areas or other places with limited broadband access to reach the internet. 

The goal is to send data through Project Kuiper’s ground infrastructure to the satellites and then back down to terminals attached to customers’ homes and businesses — and then back again the other way. The standard terminal, a large white square that sits on a roof, is 11 inches square and 1 inch thick, and weighs 5 pounds. The company’s smallest terminal is only 7 inches on each side and weighs 1 pound.

Project Kuiper’s first launch Wednesday aims to deploy 27 satellites into space, reaching 280 miles above Earth. They’ll take off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket. The United Launch Alliance, or ULA, is a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

ULA will handle the launch and deployment; then Project Kuiper’s control center in Redmond will take over, Amazon said in a blog post. The mission will be considered a success if the satellites deploy safely in orbit, independently maneuver and communicate with the Project Kuiper team on the ground.

“We’ve done extensive testing on the ground to prepare for this first mission, but there are some things you can only learn in flight,” Rajeev Badyal, Project Kuiper vice president, said in the Amazon post. “No matter how the mission unfolds, this is just the start of our journey, and we have all the pieces in place to learn and adapt as we prepare to launch again and again over the coming years.” 

Project Kuiper has secured more than 80 launches to deploy its initial constellation of 3,200 satellites, with each mission sending dozens of satellites to space. Its license with the Federal Communications Commission, received in 2020, requires it to have 1,600 satellites in space by mid-2026. 

Once in space, the satellites will separate from the Atlas V rocket and perform a series of mostly automated steps to activate various onboard systems, Amazon said ahead of Wednesday’s launch. 

The satellites will also continue to ascend until they reach their “assigned orbit” 392 miles above Earth. In orbit, they will travel 17,000 mph and circle the Earth about every 90 minutes.

The launch will be the first time Project Kuiper has deployed so many satellites at once, and the first time it has blasted production satellites into orbit. It completed a successful mission with prototype satellites in October 2023. 

There’s a lot riding on the mission for Amazon, which will spend an estimated $20 billion to finish its first-generation satellite constellation, double its original pledge, according to research organization Quilty Space.

In the Puget Sound region, Project Kuiper has a research and development facility in Redmond, a logistics hub in Everett, and a manufacturing facility in Kirkland, which opened in June. Operating at peak capacity, the manufacturing hub will be able to build five satellites per day.

Amazon’s venture has, so far, lagged behind its main competitor, Starlink, a SpaceX subsidiary that started launching satellites in 2019 and now has more than 7,000 in orbit.

But industry analysts said the late start doesn’t disqualify Project Kuiper from the race.

“I think there are benefits to being first and there are benefits to being a fast follower,” said Chad Anderson, managing partner for the venture firm Space Capital. SpaceX had to do a lot of the “heavy lifting” when it came to regulations and navigating an industry built to benefit traditional internet providers.

At the same time, the market is eager for a Starlink competitor, Anderson continued. That’s partly because more options usually lead to lower prices for consumers and partly because of Musk’s close ties with President Donald Trump, which has led some potential customers to look for alternate options.

Amazon is also one of the few companies that can finance a project with such steep upfront costs, and it has an incentive to tap into the broadband market, Anderson said. If more people are online, then more people can buy Amazon’s other services, from shopping its digital store to buying an Alexa device.

“Kuiper holds the promise of the first real competition for Starlink,” he said.

The company hasn’t set a price for what it would cost to sign up for its broadband service. 

It expects to begin offering broadband services to customers later this year, but it has pushed its timeline before; it once expected to launch its first production satellites in the first half of 2024 and start customer service that same year. 

Now, as Project Kuiper prepares to take another step closer to that goal, Anderson from Space Capital said it will take a few days to ensure everything went as planned and then an unknown period of time to launch enough satellites to create a reliable and fast broadband network. 

It took Starlink 4,000 satellites to launch a beta product, he said, but Project Kuiper always planned to operate with fewer than that. 

It “depends on how quickly they can get to orbit from here,” Anderson said. “There is a race against time.”