Two small satellites went up on an Atlas-5 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, bound for an orbit 500km high. The 14:00 EDT launch on a Friday in October 2023 put Jeff Bezos into the satellite internet business in earnest. The pair, KuiperSat-1 and KuiperSat-2, were built to trial the technology behind his Project Kuiper.
Bezos plans more than 3,200 spacecraft in the next few years, with the aim of delivering internet connections anywhere on the globe. His target is Elon Musk’s Starlink, which already sells satellite internet in many countries. SpaceX leads the field with more than 4,800 working spacecraft in orbit. UK-based Eutelsat-OneWeb has built a network of 620 satellites. Projects in Canada, the EU and China, plus proposals from other US companies, keep adding to the list.
A deadline with teeth
Amazon holds a licence from the US Federal Communications Commission to use the radio frequencies it needs. The terms demand that at least half the Kuiper system be in orbit by July 2026 and the full roll-out done by July 2029.
That means a heavy launch schedule. Amazon has agreements with rocket companies for almost 100 flights. The catch: most of those missions are booked on vehicles that have not yet entered service, and new rockets often fail early on. A failure could slow Kuiper badly.
Glare and debris
Astronomers worry about mega-constellations. Satellites that are not carefully engineered can look like bright, trailing objects when sunlight hits them at dawn and dusk. The same week as the launch, astronomers reported on the glare from an experimental satellite called BlueWalker-3. It carries a 64-sq-m antenna for connecting to mobile phones from orbit, and at times it ranked among the 10 brightest objects in the sky.
Traffic is the other worry. Multiple collisions in crowded orbits would create debris that could limit what anyone can do up there.
Kuiper is one of several space ventures for Bezos. His company Blue Origin flies “tourists” above the Earth on its New Shepard rocket and capsule. It is also working on a much bigger rocket called New Glenn, a lunar landing craft for astronauts and a commercial space station.
