Amazon, the world’s leading e-commerce platform, has announced that the company has secured nine satellite launch vehicles from United Launch Alliance (ULA) to support the deployment of a broadband internet initiative named Project Kuiper.
ULA, which is a joint venture of Boing and Lockheed Martin, will use the Atlas V series of rockets for launching the Kuiper missions. Amazon’s planned constellation would include 3,236 satellites in low Earth orbit.
The company has said that it will invest $10 billion in bringing high-speed broadband to consumers, businesses, and governments. The project faces stiff competition from the Starlink network by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
In a statement, Jeff Bezos said: “We’re determined to make affordable broadband a reality for customers and communities around the world. ULA is a fantastic partner that’s successfully launched dozens of missions for commercial and government customers, and we’re grateful for their support of Kuiper.”
ULA president and CEO Tory Bruno said in a statement, “The scope and scale of the initiative will also provide an enormous boost to U.S. leadership in space, helping create jobs and providing steady, reliable demand for the launch services industry.”
The company has declined to reveal the value of the launch contract. It is also not disclosing how many Kuiper satellites will launch on each mission, nor what version of ULA’s Atlas V rocket it will use.
Amazon has not yet released a timeline for when Kuiper launches will begin. Since the FCC authorized those launches last year, Amazon is required to deploy half of its planned satellites within six years – or about 1,600 in orbit by July 2026.
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