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Amazon has launched a second batch of 27 satellites that will power its rival service to Starlink.
The “Project Kuiper” blast-off on a ULA Atlas V rocket takes the total number of spacecraft in LEO to 54, not including two earlier prototypes launched in 2023.
The lift-off significantly comes alongside speculation that the federal government will pick the service to replace NBN’s beleaguered geostationary satellites that provide internet to remote areas of Australia.
Over the next few years, Kuiper and ULA teams will conduct six more Atlas V launches and 38 launches on ULA’s larger Vulcan Centaur rocket. Moving forward, an additional 30-plus launches are planned using launch providers Arianespace, Blue Origin and SpaceX to complete a final constellation of 3,200.
“ULA deployed the satellites at an altitude of 280 miles (450 kilometers) above Earth, at which point the Kuiper team took over command of the mission from our 24/7 mission operations center in Redmond, Washington, completing routine vehicle health checks before ultimately raising the satellites to their assigned orbit of 392 miles (630 km) above Earth,” said Amazon.
The US tech giant initially launched two prototype satellites on a ULA rocket in October 2023 and hailed the mission as a “100 per cent success”.
The new constellations of spacecraft feature significant upgrades, including phased array antennas, solar arrays and optical inter-satellite links.
Amazon believes its Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud infrastructure arm will ultimately give it an advantage over Starlink by enabling it to offer customers advanced data processing and analysis capabilities.
Space Connect reported earlier this year how Project Kuiper is speculated to have emerged as the “leading candidate” to succeed the two NBN Sky Muster spacecraft, although a decision still needs to be signed off by federal government ministers.
The GEO satellites launched in 2015 and will be decommissioned in 2032.
However, customers have long complained that the service isn’t good enough to consistently handle video, and reports suggest thousands of customers have defected to Starlink.
Low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations, such as Starlink, offer quicker services than traditional geostationary satellites, such as NBN Sky Muster, because they are closer to Earth.
The lower height, though, also means LEOs effectively cover a smaller area and, therefore, need to operate in larger, connected constellations to be effective.
Starlink, a subsidiary of SpaceX, has the advantage of being able to launch thousands of satellites without paying external customers because it operates its own reusable rockets.
It’s currently thought there are more than 7,500 Starlink satellites in orbit, with plans for a constellation of 40,000.
There are also plans for more rival services to Starlink and Project Kuiper, with Vocus recently announcing that it would collaborate with Canadian satellite provider Telesat on a separate offering.
The plan will see the Melbourne-based telecommunications company build a landing station in NSW and provide fibre connectivity, while Telesat will begin launching satellites in late 2026.
Vocus said a new low-Earth orbit (LEO) network was “important for Australia” given recent outages of digital infrastructure globally.
“Having multiple LEO satellite providers available will give Australian organisations even better protection from digital infrastructure disasters happening again,” it said. “Different networks and different providers used in combination mean outages in one won’t bring everything down.”
This article was originally published on Space Connect, Cyber Daily’s sister brand.
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