TAMPA, Fla. — Amazon has signed a contract with SpaceX to launch an unspecified variety of satellites for its Project Kuiper broadband constellation on three Falcon 9 rockets from mid-2025.
The deal adds extra capability to a multi-billion-dollar launch arrangement already in place for deploying a lot of the constellation’s greater than 3,200 satellites with United Launch Alliance (ULA), Arianespace, and Blue Origin.
It comes months after a pension fund filed a suit against Amazon’s board of directors, claiming they “acted in bad faith” in approving the majority of Kuiper launches to unproven rockets being developed by these three corporations without considering SpaceX.
Amazon has ordered eight Atlas 5 and 38 Vulcan rockets from ULA, 17 Ariane 6 launches from Arianespace, and as much as 27 Recent Glenn missions from Blue Origin. Of those, only the Atlas 5 is currently operational.
Blue Origin is owned by Amazon’s billionaire founder Jeff Bezos, and the lawsuit suggested personal animus between Bezos and SpaceX founder Elon Musk had prevented Amazon from considering the corporate.
Amazon declined to reveal more information in regards to the SpaceX launch contract beyond a transient blog post published Dec. 1.
Following successful tests of two prototypes that ULA launched to low Earth orbit in October, Amazon recently said it’s able to begin producing the remainder of the constellation for a launch campaign kicking off in the primary half of early 2024.
Initial services are slated to start later in 2024 with potential customers including three telcos: Verizon in the US, Vodafone in Europe and Africa, and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation in Japan.