Amazon aims to launch the first Kuiper Internet satellites in 2024
Amazon plans to launch its first Internet satellites into space in the first half of 2024 and offer the first commercial tests soon after, the company said Tuesday, as it prepares to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and others to provide broadband Internet worldwide.
Amazon’s satellite internet unit, Project Kuiper, will begin mass production of satellites later this year, the company said. These are the first of more than 3,000 satellites the tech giant plans to launch into low Earth orbit in the coming years.
“We will definitely be beta testing with commercial customers in 2024,” Amazon vice president of devices Dave Limp said at a conference in Washington.
The 2024 deployment goal keeps Amazon on track to meet a legal mandate to send half of its entire Kuiper network of 3,236 satellites by 2026. Limp, who oversees Amazon’s consumer devices powerhouse, said the company plans to manufacture “three to five” satellites a day. to achieve that goal.
With plans to pump more than $10 billion into the Kuiper network, Amazon sees its experience in producing millions of devices as its consumer electronics powerhouse over rival SpaceX, the Musk-owned space company that already has about 4,000 satellites in space on its Starlink network.
Amazon plans to launch a pair of prototype satellites early this year on a new rocket from the Boeing-Lockheed joint venture United Launch Alliance. The 2024 launch, carrying initial production satellites, will be the first of many more rapid deployment campaigns using rockets acquired by Amazon in 2021 and 2022.
The company also unveiled three different terminals, or antennas, on Tuesday that will connect customers to its orbiting Kuiper satellites.
A “Standard Customer Terminal,” 11-inch-square antennas, costs the company less than $400 each to produce and deliver 400 megabits per second to customers, Amazon said in a statement.
SpaceX’s Starlink consumer terminals, priced at $599 each, and other custom terminals for governments and businesses are used by “more than a million customers to date,” Jonathan Hofeller, SpaceX’s director of Starlink corporate sales, said Monday.
The smaller, square-shaped mobile antenna, measuring 7 inches wide and weighing one pound, will be Amazon’s “most affordable” terminal for the network, though the company did not disclose a price.
Amazon’s largest, “most powerful” antenna model, “designed for business, government and telecommunications applications,” will measure 19 by 30 inches and offer Internet speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second — fast enough for high-definition downloads. feature film in about 30 seconds.
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