Amazon set up a new goal for the next five years. They plan to put 3,236 satellites into low Earth orbit. These satellites will be loaded on three new heavy-lift rockets, which are still in development» as a part of Amazon’s project Kuiper.
The rockets will be made by Arianespace, Blue Origin – which was founded by Amazon owner Jeff Bezos – and United Launch Alliance.
The main goal of project Kuiper is 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».
Very much 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.
“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.
In total Mr Musk hopes to launch as many as 30,000 Starlink satellites into space.
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.
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.
Link: