D.C. Memo: Blastoff! Amazon Delivers New Internet Space Race to America
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Liftoff: A new space race has begun. A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket took off Monday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 7:01 p.m. bearing a payload of 27 Project Kuiper satellites for deployment into Low Earth orbit – the first step in Amazon’s $10 billion to $20 billion quest to compete with Elon Musk’s Starlink Internet access service, which has a substantial lead. “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,” Project Kuiper announced Tuesday morning. Politically, it was a big win for Republican FCC Chairman Brendan Carr coming within his first 100 days in office in that Carr has made fostering the space economy a major policy objective. Amazon will use eight launches of the Atlas V rocket and 38 launches of the Vulcan rocket to deliver hundreds of its satellites into space. Kuiper – which requires nearly 580 operational LEOs to initiate Internet access service – intends to deploy eventually a constellation of 3,200 satellites. Starlink currently has 7,264 orbiting LEOs serving at least 130 countries and about 5 million subscribers globally. While Amazon celebrated Kuiper’s maiden voyage, Starlink announced on its X feed the successful launch yesterday of two Falcon 9 rocket missions from California and Florida, completing the 50th mission in 2025.
