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FCC gives Amazon Leo more leeway on satellite schedule

View of Amazon Leo satellites in their dispenser in orbit
Amazon Leo satellites are folded up in their dispenser, ready for deployment in low Earth orbit. (Amazon Photo)

The Federal Communications Commission has freed Amazon from a requirement to deploy the first 1,616 satellites in its Amazon Leo broadband internet constellation by July 30.

The looming deadline had been a condition of the FCC’s 2020 license for the network, when it was known as Project Kuiper. But in January, Amazon asked for a two-year extension of that deadline, citing the limited availability of commercial launch opportunities.

Instead of pushing back July’s interim deadline, the FCC issued a conditional waiver. Amazon is still required to deploy all 3,232 of its planned Gen 1 satellites by July 30, 2029, as originally mandated. Amazon Leo currently has 331 satellites in orbit, with another 36 due for launch next week.

SpaceX — which operates Starlink, a rival satellite broadband network with more than 10 million subscribers — opposed giving Amazon more time. It argued that the FCC should make Amazon wait for a future processing round. But in an order issued on June 5, the FCC said its remedy was “tailored to ensure that Americans quickly benefit from multiple, facilities-based providers of next-gen satellite services.”

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Blue Origin gets ready to launch Amazon Leo satellites

Two New Glenn rockets being processed at Blue Origin facility
New Glenn rockets are being processed inside Blue Origin’s Florida facility. (Blue Origin Photo)

Five weeks after experiencing its first launch failure, Kent, Wash.-based Blue Origin is getting ready to put its heavy-lift New Glenn rocket back in service to launch 48 satellites into low Earth orbit for the growing Amazon Leo constellation.

The mission, designated as NG-4 for the rocket and LN-01 for the payload, will mark the first time Blue Origin’s rockets have launched satellites for Amazon — forging a new connection between the two best-known companies founded by Jeff Bezos. It will also set a new high for the number of Leo broadband satellites launched on a single mission.

“Couldn’t be prouder to support the Leo team on this mission,” Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said in a post to X. Before he joined Blue Origin in 2023, Limp was the Amazon executive in charge of the Amazon Leo program (when it was known as Project Kuiper).

This will be the fourth launch of a New Glenn rocket. The first-stage booster for NG-4 is nicknamed “No, It’s Necessary” — a line from the movie “Interstellar” that refers to the need for a bold space maneuver.

New Glenn had been grounded in the wake of last month’s unsuccessful launch of an AST SpaceMobile satellite from Florida. But last week, the Federal Aviation Administration said it accepted the findings of an investigation led by Blue Origin. The investigation said the mishap was caused by a cryogenic leak that froze a hydraulic line, leading to a thrust anomaly during the second-stage engine burn.

Blue Origin identified nine corrective actions to prevent a recurrence of the mishap, and the FAA authorized the return to flight. An FAA advisory suggested the launch could take place as early as next week.

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Starfish sets sights on new target for satellite docking

Illustration: Otter Pup 2 satellite in orbit
An artist’s conception shows Starfish Space’s Otter Pup 2 satellite in orbit. (Starfish Space Illustration)

Eleven months after launch, Starfish Space’s Otter Pup 2 satellite is finally kicking its test mission into high gear, closing in for a rendezvous with a newly designated target.

If all goes according to plan, Otter Pup 2 will dock with Australia-based Gilmour Space’s ElaraSat satellite sometime in the next few months. ElaraSat became the new target after earlier plans to connect with a D-Orbit ION satellite were scrubbed for undisclosed reasons.

Trevor Bennett, one of the founders of Tukwila, Wash.-based Starfish Space, said ElaraSat was launched on the same SpaceX satellite rideshare mission that sent Otter Pup 2 into orbit last June. Gilmour Space was “more than willing and excited to jump on and do something a little bit ambitious and crazy with us,” he told me.

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TerraByte creates ‘Earth Search Engine’ for satellite data

Screenshot of TerraByte AI's Earth Search Engine
TerraByte’s software platform pinpoints cargo ships, warehouses, solar farms, mining sites and areas of deforestation. (Credit: TerraByte AI)

A stealthy Seattle startup called TerraByte AI is unveiling a software platform that uses artificial intelligence to sift through real-time satellite data for geospatial gems.

TerraByte’s “Earth Search Engine” analyzes streams of satellite imagery, recognizes features of interest and connects the dots through natural-language queries. The platform’s key advantage is that its data set doesn’t have to go through the laborious, expensive process of manual annotation.

“We’re just using self-supervised learning techniques to essentially understand the pixels without having to manually annotate it,” CEO and co-founder Rishi Madhok told me.

“There are many applications that you can do, like identifying power-line segments, finding parking lots near highways without EV charging stalls, watching container ships entering port,” he explained. “If you want to monitor the Strait of Hormuz, you can use our models to do that. Deforestation areas, open-pit mining in Arizona — all of these are very different concepts, but our model is able to understand them because it’s a foundational model.”

TerraByte is laying out its approach this week in Huntsville, Ala., at an ESA-NASA workshop on AI models for Earth observation.

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Amazon Leo revs up work on satellite broadband network

Amazon Leo executive Chris Weber at Mission Operations Center, wearing black-and-krypton T-shirt
Chris Weber, vice president of business and product for Amazon Leo, takes part in coverage of a satellite launch. (Credit: United Launch Alliance)

REDMOND, Wash. — Chris Weber isn’t ready to say yet exactly when Amazon Leo will start letting individual customers sign up for satellite broadband service, but when it happens, he’ll have the right wardrobe for the debut.

During a recent interview at Amazon Leo’s Mission Operations Center in Redmond, Weber sported running shoes in a shade of purple with the Leo brand emblazoned on the back.

“It’s not purple, it’s krypton,” Weber, who came over from GitLab in 2024 to become Amazon Leo’s vice president of business and product, told me. “Krypton is the color when our thrusters fire in space, so we picked that. It was obviously available in the Amazon palette. … There’s a lot of meaning and thought that went into our brands, and we’re quite excited about that.”

It’s been a year since Amazon Leo, formerly known as Project Kuiper, began its multibillion-dollar campaign to send up thousands of satellites to provide broadband internet access across the globe. So far, 304 satellites have been deployed over the course of 11 launches — and Weber said the Amazon Leo team will be running twice as hard in the year ahead.

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Blue Origin aces rocket reuse, but satellite goes awry

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket rises from its Florida pad
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket rises from its Florida pad, sending an AST SpaceMobile satellite into space. (Blue Origin via YouTube)

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture used a previously flown New Glenn rocket booster to send a satellite into space today, marking a first for the company.

It was also New Glenn’s first launch failure.

The first-stage booster — nicknamed “Never Tell Me the Odds” — made its second successful touchdown on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean, drawing cheers from the Blue Origin team. But hours later, AST SpaceMobile said that its BlueBird 7 satellite was not deployed into its intended orbit.

“BlueBird 7 was placed into a lower than planned orbit by the upper stage of the launch vehicle,” the Texas-based company said in a news release. “While the satellite separated from the launch vehicle and powered on, the altitude is too low to sustain operations with its onboard thruster technology and will [be] deorbited. The cost of the satellite is expected to be recovered under the company’s insurance policy.”

The rocket lifted off from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 7:25 a.m. ET (4:25 a.m. PT). The twice-used booster made its first flight last November when it launched NASA’s Escapade probes on a mission to Mars. Blue Origin’s Florida team recovered and refurbished the booster for today’s launch.

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Portal Space gets a $50M boost for faster space mobility

Illustration: Portal's Starburst and Supernova vehicles in Earth orbit
An artist's conception shows Portal’s Starburst and Supernova spacecraft in Earth orbit. (Portal Space Systems Illustration)

Bothell, Wash.-based Portal Space Systems has raised $50 million in a funding round aimed at speeding up development of the Seattle-area startup’s highly maneuverable space vehicles.

The first such vehicle, Starburst-1, is due for launch as early as this fall as a payload on SpaceX’s Transporter-18 satellite rideshare mission. Portal is also getting ready to move into a 52,000-square-foot manufacturing facility where future Starburst spacecraft and even more capable Supernova space vehicles will be built.

Portal CEO Jeff Thornburg — who co-founded the company in 2021 following stints at tech ventures including SpaceX and Stratolaunch Systems — characterized the newly announced Series A funding round as closer to a giant leap than a small step.

“The thing that’s exciting me the most, and really the company at large, is that it helps us move faster,” he told me. “We’re obviously focused on getting Starburst and Supernova capabilities demonstrated and available to our customers as quickly as we can.”

The round was led by Geodesic Capital and Mach33, with participation by Booz Allen Ventures, AlleyCorp and FUSE. It builds on a $17.5 million seed round that was announced last year.

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Starfish Space raises $110M for satellite servicing

Illustration: Starfish Space's Otter in geostationary Earth orbit with Earth in background
An artist’s conception shows Starfish Space’s Otter satellite servicing vehicle in geostationary Earth orbit. (Starfish Space Illustration)

Tukwila, Wash.-based Starfish Space says it has raised about $110 million in a funding round that will help the company execute its first satellite servicing missions and scale up operations for more business.

The Series B round was led by Point72 Ventures. Activate Capital and Shield Capital were co-leaders of the round. Additional major participants included Industrious Ventures and NightDragon. The round also drew support from several existing Starfish investors (NFX, Munich Re Ventures, Toyota Ventures and PSL Ventures) as well as new investors (Nomi Capital, Gaingels and Overlap Holdings).

The new capital adds to previous funding rounds announced in 2021, 2023 and 2024, and pushes Starfish’s total investment past the $150 million mark.

Starfish Space was founded in 2019 by engineers Austin Link and Trevor Bennett, two veterans of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture. The company has developed a space vehicle called Otter, which is designed to rendezvous and dock with other objects in orbit — either to maneuver them into a different orbit or guide them to safe disposal.

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Blue Origin jumps into the data center space race

Image: Satellite web
An artist’s conception shows a constellation of satellites in orbit. (Credit: OneWeb)

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture is asking the Federal Communications Commission for authority to send up to 51,600 data center satellites into low Earth orbit, signaling its entry into an increasingly crowded space race.

The proposed constellation, dubbed Project Sunrise, would complement Blue Origin’s previously announced plans for a 5,408-satellite TeraWave constellation. TeraWave would provide ultra-high-speed connectivity for Project Sunrise’s satellites — and for terrestrial data centers, large-scale enterprises and government customers as well.

Once again, Bezos is competing with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which is seeking the FCC’s approval for a constellation of data centers that could amount to a million satellites. And SpaceX has already taken notice. So has Redmond, Wash.-based Starcloud, which is working on its own plans for a data center network that could call for tens of thousands of satellites.

Tech companies are becoming increasingly interested in fielding orbital data centers because such networks could bypass the power and cooling constraints facing Earth-based AI data centers. Last October, Bezos said at a tech conference in Italy that orbital data centers would be the “next step” in a transition from Earth-based to space-based industry. “We will be able to beat the cost of terrestrial data centers in space in the next couple of decades,” he said.

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Portal teams up with Paladin for orbital trash disposal

Illustration: Triton-equipped Starburst and Supernova spacecraft in orbit.
An artist's conception shows Portal Space Systems' Starburst spacecraft at left and its larger Supernova platform in the distance at right, both outfitted with Paladin Space's Triton payload for orbital debris tracking and removal. (Portal Space Systems Illustration)

Bothell, Wash.-based Portal Space Systems is partnering with an Australian venture called Paladin Space on a commercial service that would round up and dispose of potentially dangerous orbital debris.

The concept — known as Debris Removal as a Service, or DRAAS — is meant to address one of the most pernicious problems facing spacecraft operators: how to dodge tens of thousands of pieces of space junk that are zipping through Earth orbit.

Since its founding in 2021, Portal has been focusing on the development of maneuverable orbital vehicles that could rendezvous with other satellites, either for servicing or for disposal. Its flagship is the Supernova in-space mobility platform, which will be equipped with an innovative solar thermal propulsion system. There’ll also be a smaller version of the spacecraft, called Starburst.

Starburst-1 is due for launch as early as this year, and Supernova is scheduled to make its debut in 2027.

Meanwhile, Paladin Space has been working on a reusable payload called Triton, which is designed to track and capture tumbling pieces of orbital debris that are less than 1 meter (3 feet) in size. That small-to-medium size category accounts for most of the debris that’s being tracked in orbit.

“Triton is built to remove dozens of those objects in a single mission, which fundamentally changes the cost structure of debris remediation and provides the greatest benefit to satellite operators,” Paladin CEO Harrison Box said today in a news release.

The Portal-Paladin partnership calls for installing Triton hardware on Starburst spacecraft. Portal’s orbital platform would go out in search of space junk, and Paladin’s payload would grab the debris. When Triton’s trash bin is full, it would be dropped off for safe disposal while the spacecraft remains in orbit for continued servicing.

The companies are targeting an initial deployment in 2027, focusing on heavily trafficked bands of low Earth orbit. Future missions may use Supernova’s added capabilities to service a wider variety of orbits.

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