Thought Leadership
The launch of Amazon’s first internet satellites, which are intended to compete with Elon Musk’s Starlink system, has been postponed due to bad weather.
A new date for the launch of the carrier rocket, which was to take off from Cape Canaveral in the US state of Florida and bring 27 satellites into space, was not initially announced. Amazon’s system for supplying internet from space, known as Project Kuiper, is to be expanded to around 3,200 satellites in the coming years.
This requires appropriate space on board launch vehicles. The world’s largest online retailer has already secured the capacity for dozens of launches. The first satellites will fly on an Atlas V rocket from United Launch Alliance (ULA). According to the operating license, 1600 Kuiper satellites must be in space by the middle of next year. In the fall of 2023, Amazon tested the functionality of the system with two test satellites.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk is a pioneer in fast internet from space with the Starlink satellites of his space company SpaceX. Such services are not only interesting for consumers and military purposes, but also for airlines, for example – and for telecommunications companies that do not want to build expensive infrastructure in remote or sparsely populated areas.
dpa
