According to news on October 7, on Friday local time in the United States, Amazon launched its first two Internet prototype satellites into orbit, officially extending its tentacles into space. This is a key step for Amazon to build a space Internet, which will consist of more than 3,000 satellites. Amazon hopes its space Internet will compete with SpaceX's Starlink system to provide Internet services to more people.


The two prototype satellites were launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 2:06 pm on Friday, aboard an Atlas 5 (Atlas V) launch vehicle operated by United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin. It is unclear whether the satellites are in the correct orbit and functioning properly. An Amazon spokesman declined to comment.

Amazon said in a blog post that in the coming days and weeks, the company hopes to use the satellites to "add real-world data from space to years of data collected from lab and field testing" while working to build out the rest of its Kuiper program.

Rajeev Badyal, vice president of technology for the Kuiper project, said in the post: "We have done extensive testing in the laboratory and are confident in our satellite design. However, these are no substitutes for on-orbit testing. This is the first time Amazon has sent a satellite into space, and no matter how the mission unfolds, we will learn an incredible amount of information."

Amazon has said it intends to invest more than $10 billion in Project Kuiper and hopes to launch its first batch of production satellites in the first half of next year and begin initial testing with commercial customers by the end of 2024. Amazon has until July 2026 to launch half of the 3,236 satellites under license from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

The goal of Project Kuiper is to bring the large number of people in rural and remote areas without broadband to the Internet. The system works by transmitting Internet signals from satellites to small ground terminals.

Amazon executives believe the Kuiper Network will eventually become a competitor to SpaceX's Starlink network, which has grown rapidly but also caused much controversy. SpaceX founder Elon Musk doesn't want it to be used for offensive drone attacks. But it may take several years before Amazon's system is fully established and poses a real competitive threat to Musk.


Not only is Amazon under pressure to meet a looming deadline, but the company already has contracts to launch much of its Kuiper satellite network on three rockets: Blue Origin's New Glenn, United Launch Alliance's Vulcan and Arianespace's Ariane 6. However, the development progress of these three rockets has been pushed back again and again, and no launch has yet been carried out.

Those launch contracts prompted a lawsuit, filed in August by an Amazon shareholder, claiming the company breached its fiduciary duty by failing to consider handing launch operations to SpaceX, one of the world's most affordable and reliable launch providers. "By excluding SpaceX, Bezos and his management team minimized competitive bidding for the launch agreement and potentially cost Amazon hundreds of millions of dollars more," the lawsuit states.

The indictment also alleges that Amazon did not use SpaceX in part because of a competitive relationship between Bezos and SpaceX founder Musk. It reads: "Given the past poor relationship between the two of them, Bezos has every reason to exclude Musk's SpaceX from the bidding process entirely. Moreover, we must assume that Bezos cannot swallow his pride and seek help from his archenemy to launch Amazon's satellite."

Amazon has not commented on the lawsuit. But in an interview last year, Dave Limp, Amazon's senior vice president of equipment and services, said the company was "open to cooperation negotiations" with SpaceX. Limp was recently named CEO of Blue Origin and is expected to take over in December.

Meanwhile, SpaceX has gained a huge lead on its Starlink network, which already has nearly 5,000 satellites in orbit. SpaceX has launched 70 times this year and is able to quickly launch these satellites using Falcon 9 rockets. The company says its systems operate in more than 60 countries and have more than 2 million active customers. Last month, SpaceX also won a Pentagon contract worth up to $70 million to build a military version of the Starlink Star Shield system.

Still, Amazon is confident it can compete. Last year, Limp said in an interview: "I think this is like a sports competition, there will always be a winner. There are indeed hundreds of millions of users around the world who do not have access to good broadband, and I think there is enough room for two great space Internets."

Amazon believes that with its already huge user base and cloud computing business AWS, it will have an inherent advantage. Amazon said these advantages will help the company provide high-speed Internet services. (little)

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