mazon has introduced the primary of its Undertaking Kuiper web satellites will launch on Friday, October 6.
The 2 satellites, dubbed KuiperSat-1 and KuiperSat-2, shall be aboard an Atlas V rocket, which can take off from the Cape Canaveral Area Power Station in Florida.
If all goes properly, the satellites will enter low Earth orbit, at an altitude of some 311 miles.
“That is Amazon’s first time placing satellites into house, and we’re going to be taught an unimaginable quantity no matter how the mission unfolds,” says Undertaking Kuiper vp of expertise Rajeev Badyal.
The eventual purpose is to ascertain a satellite tv for pc array just like that of the Elon Musk-owned Starlink.
Its array gives web by way of satellite tv for pc, and you’ll join it proper right here within the UK already.
Amazon has “plans to fabricate and deploy” 3,200 of those web satellites “over the subsequent six years”.
Nevertheless, these preliminary two are check runs and, as soon as their job is completed, the Undertaking Kuiper workforce will “actively deorbit” them. They’ll drop out of orbit and dissipate in re-entry to Earth’s ambiance.
The exams will embody deploying “photo voltaic arrays” to generate energy, and testing the connection between the Kuiper workforce on the bottom and the satellites themselves.
Whereas that is the primary large step in satellite tv for pc web by way of Amazon, Undertaking Kuiper’s plans are maybe surprisingly shut at hand.
Undertaking Kuiper historical past
The primary satellites that can kind half of the particular array used to transmit satellite tv for pc web are deliberate for the primary half of 2024, whereas “beta testing with early industrial prospects” is coming later that very same 12 months.
Kuiper was introduced in 2019 as an Amazon challenge with largely the identical outward goals it has now, utilizing 3,200-odd satellites to “present low-latency, high-speed broadband connectivity to unserved and underserved communities around the globe,” an Amazon assertion from the time learn.
In 2020, Amazon stated it had developed an antenna that could possibly be used to obtain satellite tv for pc web at speeds of as much as 400Mbps. We noticed a revised model of the {hardware} earlier this 12 months, which may obtain gigabit speeds.
In 2021, the Undertaking Kuiper workforce introduced its intention to launch its first check satellites in late 2022. Why the two-year delay? There have been points with securing a dependable rocket to take the satellites up into orbit.
Amazon’s Undertaking Kuiper is now roughly five-and-a-half years behind SpaceX’s Starlink, which launched its first check satellites in February 2018.
In keeping with an internet satellite tv for pc map, Starlink has launched 5,104 satellites up to now, and 4,268 are energetic on the time of reporting. Starlink’s satellite tv for pc web is offered in London, and begins at £75 a month.
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