Perhaps few know that Starlink, Elon Musk's project that aims to make satellite internet accessible to “everyone”, also has a competitor. It is about Cooper di Amazon. A project we hardly hear about but that will be on everyone's lips in the future. Because? Because it seems to have an official launch date. Let's go see the details.
The Amazon Kuiper project, which aims to challenge Starlink and propose satellite internet, will debut next year. Here are the details
The Kuiper Project, the satellite Internet program of Amazon, finally appears to have a launch date for its first equipment in orbit. The new program was officially announced and aims to be launched during the first quarter of 2023. According to Jeff Bezos' company, an agreement has been signed with the United Launch Alliance (ULA) for the debut launch of the new Vulcan rocket that will also take the lunar lander into space peregrine by Astrobotic.
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The inaugural flight of the Vulcan rocket is a few years behind schedule due to unforeseen problems with the design and testing of the BE-4 engine, developed by Blue Origin. The vehicle is expected to be finished and ready to launch in November this year. ULA already has a contract with Amazon to carry out 47 Project Kuiper launches, 38 of which with the Vulcan rocket. However, Kuiper also has other partners like Arianespace and Blue Origin itself, which together they will launch 3.236 satellites.
the idea is to create a constellation capable of providing a high-speed connection to the whole world, in the same way as SpaceX's Starlink satellites, which already have more than 4.000 satellites in orbit. Announced in 2019 and cleared for release in 2020, Amazon's Project Kuiper has experienced several delays and is only expected to take off on next year. Only time will tell if Jeff Bezos' company will be able to take on Elon Musk's.
