Amazon Finally Launches Satellite Internet. Will It Compete With Starlink?

An Atlas V rocket has launched from the launch pad, Cape Canaveral with 27 fully-built Project Kuiper satellites for Amazon, according to Space.com. You will remember that the initial launch was meant for April 9th, and that was The liftoff made this the first operational batch after the 2 prototypes that were launched in 2023.

United Launch Alliance confirmed that there was a successful and clean launch. Amazon also confirmed, saying, “On Monday, April 28, ULA successfully launched our KA-01 mission into space. Our team has already established contact with all 27 satellites, and initial deployment and activation sequences are proceeding nominally. We’ll have subsequent updates to share as the mission unfolds.”

Amazon booked more than 80 rockets across 4 launch companies, with United Launch Alliance, Blue Origin, Arianespace and even rival SpaceX. This gives the project enough lift capacity to place 3,236 satellites in orbit within a few years.

The constellation is named after the Kuiper Belt, a band of icy bodies past Neptune, and Amazon treats the project as part of its Devices and Services division rather than an offshoot of Jeff Bezos’s rocket firm.

The company targets the first user connections late this year. Its licence demands that half the constellation reach orbit before July 2026, a timetable that keeps pressure on factories in Washington state and on the launch pads in Florida, Texas and French Guiana.

How Does Project Kuiper Deliver Internet?

Kuiper links together 3 elements:

• ground stations that tie into fibre, satellites that relay traffic
• flat terminals that sit outside homes
• farms or schools.

Amazon showed 3 terminal sizes…

• The smallest is about the width of a paperback, and reaches 100 megabits per second.
• A pizza-box version steps up to 400 megabits
• A briefcase-sized panel pushes 1 gigabit for businesses or clinics.

Company engineers say mass production can cut unit cost, a lesson learned from Kindle and Echo devices. Unlike cables that must cross mountains or desert, low-orbit relays hop data overhead, closing gaps that still exist only an hour’s drive from Seattle.

Speeds use short round-trip time between ground and space. At roughly 630km, radio waves need under 5/100 of a second to travel up and back, quick enough for video calls or online gaming. Optical links between satellites pass packets across the sky, so a webpage in a remote village may route through space instead of along undersea cables.

Each Kuiper craft carries extra fuel for controlled re-entry at the end of life, cutting the risk of debris. The mirrored coating, combined with attitude tweaks at dawn and dusk, intends to keep apparent brightness below naked-eye limits set by astronomy groups.

Where Is Starlink Today?

SpaceX launched its first Starlink units in 2019 and now commands the numbers game. More than 7,000 working satellites orbit around 550 kilometres, and Falcon 9 rockets lift new batches every few days. The firm logged its 250th dedicated Starlink flight on 27 April, and a 251st mission followed only hours after Kuiper’s Atlas V.

The company also announced a new £0 plan… Starlink tweeted, “$0 for the Standard Kit with 12-month residential service plan commitment, now available in select markets. Reliable high-speed internet in even the most rural and remote locations.”

Starlink deploys batches of more than 20 satellites on each Falcon 9, while Kuiper sends smaller groups on heavier rockets until Blue Origin’s New Glenn and ULA’s Vulcan raise flight tempo.

If Amazon keeps to its schedule and SpaceX keeps up its rhythm, remote classrooms, clinics and businesses may soon pick from two rival constellations instead of none at all…