As a part of Amazon’s Mission Kuiper, three new heavy-lift rockets will launch 1000’s of satellites into low-Earth orbit over the subsequent 5 years.
A constellation of three,236 satellites can be used within the venture to ship broadband entry.
Starlink, a competitor, is believed to have greater than 2,300 satellites already in orbit.
Arianespace, Blue Origin (established by Amazon proprietor Jeff Bezos), and United Launch Alliance will construct the rockets.
In keeping with Amazon, Mission Kuiper intends to supply high-speed, low-latency broadband to purchasers corresponding to households, companies, authorities companies, catastrophe aid operations, cell operators, and different organizations “working in areas the place dependable web connectivity is unavailable.”
Customers will hook up with the web through a terminal that communicates with the satellites, just like Elon Musk’s Starlink. Amazon claims that its expertise in delivery and manufacturing units such because the Echo and Kindle can be helpful in producing and distributing these.
“Mission Kuiper will supply quick, low-cost broadband to tens of thousands and thousands of customers in unserved and underserved locations worldwide,” mentioned Dave Limp, senior vice chairman of Amazon Gadgets & Companies, in an announcement asserting the acquisition.
New rockets
Amazon intends to launch 83 rockets over the subsequent 5 years, calling it the “greatest industrial acquisition of launch autos in historical past.”
Later this 12 months, the corporate deliberate two “prototype” missions, however they may use an ABL Area Methods rocket somewhat than the three that may launch the vast majority of the satellites.
The three new rockets utilized for Mission Kuiper launches, in contrast to Elon Musk’s Falcon 9 rockets, are nonetheless in improvement.
Following the invasion of Ukraine, one other satellite tv for pc web supplier, OneWeb, which is partly managed by the British authorities, lately elected to make use of SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets after shedding entry to the Russian-built Soyuz rockets it had been utilizing.
Mr. Musk hopes to ship as much as 30,000 Starlink satellites into house.
The worth of this type of low-Earth orbit satellite tv for pc web has already been proved in Ukraine, the place the US Company for Worldwide Improvement introduced that it had helped ship 5,000 Starlink terminals to the nation’s authorities in collaboration with SpaceX.
Nevertheless, as low-Earth orbit will get more and more crowded, astronomers have complained that the sunshine mirrored from these satellites as they cross overhead interferes with their view of the evening sky.
“The satellites are actually killing our beautiful evening sky,” astronomer Mary McIntyre wrote on Twitter.
In a single day on 2nd3rd April 2022 our SW dealing with #RaspberryPi #meteorcamera UK0006 primarily based in North Oxfordshire had one of many worst nights we’ve ever seen for #satellitetrails. Dotted strains = plane, curved strains = #startrails + there are about 25 meteors. Simply horrendous 🙁 pic.twitter.com/ZLZNK4xgq2
— Mary McIntyre FRAS (she/her) (@Spicey_Spiney) April 4, 2022
There are additionally issues that having so many satellites in orbit will increase the potential for collisions and provides to the issue of house particles.
