Amazon is enlisting the assistance of one in all its biggest rivals to shuttle its Project Kuiper web satellites into space. The corporate will use SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket for 3 launches starting in 2025, Amazon announced on Friday.
Project Kuiper is Amazon’s low Earth orbit satellite program that would eventually provide users across the globe with web connectivity. Amazon launched its first two Project Kuiper test satellites into space in October, where it managed to hook up with the web and conduct a two-way video call. Nevertheless, it still has to do some serious catching as much as SpaceX’s Starlink, which has already deployed around 5,000 satellites.
Despite the rivalry between the 2 corporations, it doesn’t exactly come as a surprise that Amazon has chosen SpaceX as a future launch provider. Satellite corporations and government agencies have turn into increasingly reliant on SpaceX’s reusable rockets for consistent — and cheaper — launches, as identified by an earlier report from . The Elon Musk-owned company powered 88 percent of flights in the primary six months of 2023 alone.
Most of Amazon’s satellites will still be ferried by Arianespace, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, and United Launch Alliance (ULA), though. Amazon secured as much as 83 launches with the three corporations last 12 months, which it says “provides enough capability to launch the bulk” of its planned 3,236 satellite constellation. It can deploy more Project Kuiper satellites in the primary half of 2024, with beta testing starting toward the tip of next 12 months.