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Amazon says Kuiper satellites pass maneuvering tests

Amazon Project Kuiper Hall-effect thruster during test firing
Amazon’s Hall-effect thruster fires up with a krypton glow during testing. (Amazon Photo)

A month after the launch of its first prototype Project Kuiper satellites, Amazon reports that the spacecraft have demonstrated controlled maneuvering in orbit using their custom-built electric propulsion systems.

“A recent series of test firings provided critical on-orbit data to further validate our satellite design, with each test returning nominal results consistent with our design requirements,” Amazon said today in an online status report.

Today’s report suggest that Amazon’s Project Kuiper team — which is headquartered in Redmond, Wash. — is on track in its multibillion-dollar effort to create a 3,236-satellite constellation that would eventually provide broadband internet access for millions of people around the globe.

The two prototypes, known as KuiperSat 1 and 2, were sent into orbit atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket on Oct. 6. They’re designed to test the hardware as well as the software, ground-based facilities and procedures that will be used for the full constellation. Amazon says that the first operational satellites are due to be launched early next year, and that beta service to selected enterprise customers could begin by the end of 2024.

At least half of the 3,236 satellites will have to be placed in orbit by mid-2026 to satisfy the requirements of Amazon’s license from the Federal Communications Commission. Mass production is due to begin by the end of the year at Amazon’s factory in Kirkland, Wash., at a rate that Amazon says will eventually ramp up to as many as four satellites per day. So, it’s in Amazon’s interest to make sure the design is fine-tuned as soon as possible.

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Atlas V rocket sends Amazon’s first satellites into space

Atlas V rocket launch with Amazon Project Kuiper satellites
United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket launches Amazon’s first Project Kuiper satellites. (ULA via YouTube)

Amazon’s first satellites were launched today on a mission aimed at testing out the hardware and software for the Seattle company’s worldwide Project Kuiper broadband internet constellation.

Two prototype satellites — known as KuiperSat 1 and 2 — rode a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida into space at 2:06 p.m. ET (11:06 a.m. PT).

United Launch Alliance provided updates on what it called the Protoflight mission via its X / Twitter account. In a post-launch statement, ULA declared the mission to be successful and said that the Atlas V “precisely” delivered the satellites to orbit.

The satellites were sent into 311-mile-high (500-kilometer-high) orbits with a 30-degree inclination. In a status update, Amazon said Project Kuiper’s mission operations center in Redmond, Wash., confirmed first contact with both satellites within an hour after launch.

“Five plus years in the making. So much care, persistence, boldness and beauty,” Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said in a posting to Instagram and Threads. “What an amazing endeavor. … Big milestone and much more to come!”

Project Kuiper, an ambitious program that was publicly unveiled in 2019, aims to provide broadband internet access — and satellite-based access to Amazon Web Services — to millions of people who are currently underserved. Amazon plans to use the prototypes — which were built at Project Kuiper’s HQ in Redmond — to test the hardware on the spacecraft, as well as ground operations and customer terminals.

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Amazon satellites take their places for milestone launch

Amazon Kuiper Prototype payload arrives at ULA's Vertical Integration Facility
Amazon's Project Kuiper satellite payload arrives for stacking in Florida. (United Launch Alliance Photo)

United Launch Alliance says the first prototype satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband network have been placed atop their Atlas V rocket, with launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida set for Oct. 6.

The launch window will open on that day at 2 p.m. ET (11 a.m. PT), ULA said today in an online update.

Liftoff will mark a milestone for Project Kuiper, which aims to put more than 3,200 satellites into orbit to provide broadband internet access to millions of people around the world who are currently underserved. Kuiper is seen as a competitor to SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network, which already has more than 2 million subscribers.

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Amazon forges satellite deal with Vodafone and Vodacom

Project Kuiper satellite antenna with cell tower in background
A cellular tower serves as the backdrop for Project Kuiper’s satellite terminal. (Amazon Photo)

Vodafone and its African subsidiary, Vodacom, have made a deal to use Amazon’s yet-to-be-deployed Project Kuiper satellite broadband network to extend the reach of their 4G/5G cellular networks.

The deal, which was announced this week by Amazon as well as British-based Vodafone, would give Project Kuiper business connections in Europe and Africa that are comparable to Amazon’s previously announced partnership with Verizon for extending telecom services in the U.S.

Vodafone and its subsidiaries provide mobile and fixed telecom service to more than 300 million customers in 17 countries, and partner with mobile networks in 46 other countries. “This is our second telco partnership, and we look forward to working with other telcos,” an Amazon spokesperson told me in an email.

Like SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network, Project Kuiper aims to provide broadband internet service to millions of people around the world who are underserved. SpaceX is far ahead of Amazon: While SpaceX has deployed thousands of Starlink satellites and has more than 1.5 million subscribers, Amazon hasn’t yet deployed a single Kuiper satellite.

Kuiper’s first prototypes are due for launch as early as this month, kicking off what’s expected to be an ambitious campaign to deploy half of the network’s planned 3,236 satellites by mid-2026. The satellite operations for Kuiper and Starlink are both based in Redmond, Wash.

Project Kuiper’s plan calls for selling satellite terminals to end users, as well as working with partners to connect geographically dispersed cellular antennas with the companies’ core telecom networks. The latter strategy is the focus of the newly announced deal with Vodafone and Vodacom.

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Lawsuit questions Amazon’s deal on satellite launches

Vulcan, New Glenn and Ariane 6 rockets
An artist's conception shows three types of rockets Amazon plans to use for Project Kuiper launches. (Amazon Illustration)

An Ohio-based pension fund has filed a lawsuit alleging that Amazon didn’t give due consideration to SpaceX as a potential launch provider for its Project Kuiper broadband internet satellite constellation, which is a rival for SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network.

The lawsuit, filed by the Cleveland Bakers and Teamsters Pension Fund in the Delaware Court of Chancery, says Amazon’s board of directors acted in bad faith last year when they chose three other providers — including Blue Origin, the space venture owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — but left out SpaceX.

The other two companies were the European Arianespace consortium and United Launch Alliance, which will use Blue Origin’s BE-4 engine on its Vulcan Centaur rocket. The lawsuit says the three agreements add up to Amazon’s second-largest capital expenditure, after its $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods in 2017.

So far, Amazon has spent nearly $1.7 billion on the launch deal, including $585 million paid out to Blue Origin directly, the lawsuit says.

In its filing, the CB&T Fund — which owns shares in Amazon — says that the company’s directors and officers, including the board of directors’ audit committee, made “no effort to properly discharge their fiduciary duties.” It suggests that Amazon’s decisions were unduly influenced by Bezos’ outside interest in Blue Origin.

The lawsuit tracks the tiffs that have arisen between Bezos and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk over the years, as well as the setbacks experienced during the development of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket and ULA’s Vulcan rocket.

The pension fund questioned whether the company would be able to make a federally mandated deadline to deploy half of its planned 3,236 satellites by mid-2026. It implied that the prospects would be better if Amazon had struck a deal with SpaceX, which it said “has by far the most proven launch track record in history.”

“In the face of SpaceX’s proven reliability and cost advantages, Bezos-led Amazon’s decision to not even consider SpaceX as a launch provider illustrates the glaring conflict of Bezos’ affiliation with both Amazon and Blue Origin presented, and the substantial impact these conflicts had on the board’s ability to protect the best interests of the company and its stockholders in negotiating the contracts,” the pension fund said in its suit.

The suit seeks unspecified damages, legal costs and “immediate disgorgement of all profits, benefits and other compensation obtained by defendants as a result of their breaches of fiduciary duties.”

In an emailed statement, an Amazon spokesperson said that “the claims in this lawsuit are completely without merit, and we look forward to showing that through the legal process.”

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Starfish Space uses magnetism to rescue satellite

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

Two and a half months after Starfish Space’s first orbital mission teetered on the edge of failure because its Otter Pup satellite docking system took a wild tumble, the Kent, Wash.-based startup says that it has stopped the spin and is moving ahead with preparations to rendezvous with another satellite.

Mission controllers still have to make sure that Otter Pup is in working order, and they still have to identify a satellite they can link up with. But Starfish co-founder Austin Link said the team has gotten over the highest hurdle: “de-tumbling” a spacecraft that had been rotating at a rate of roughly one revolution per second.

“This is the first time that we as a company have gone and done something really unique and really extraordinary in space,” Link told me. “It wasn’t the thing that we set out to do with this mission. We still have that ahead of us. But to do that is, to me, another proof point for how excited I am to get to work with all the incredible folks we have at Starfish.”

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Starfish Space wins $1.8M for satellite software

Illustration: Cephalopod guidance software at work
An illustration shows one satellite closing in to rendezvous with another satellite. (Starfish Space Illustration)

Kent, Wash.-based Starfish Space says it’s been awarded $1.8 million by AFWERX, the innovation arm of the Department of the Air Force, to support continued development of the company’s Cephalopod software for satellite guidance, navigation and control.

The award builds on previous collaborations between Starfish and the Air Force Research Laboratory.

Technically speaking, the contract is known as a Tactical Funding Increase, or TACFI. Ari Juster, strategy and operations lead at Starfish, said it was awarded as a follow-up to a $1.7 million Phase II Small Business Innovation Research contract that the startup received in 2021. In a news release, Starfish co-founder Austin Link said he was “excited to continue our collaboration with AFRL.”

“Cephalopod can serve as a key technology enabling future servicing missions to benefit satellite operators, and we have found the AFRL team to be great partners in supporting its development,” Link said.

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Amazon revises Project Kuiper satellite plans … again

Atlas V with Amazon satellites
An illustration shows an Atlas V rocket launching Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellites. (ULA / Amazon)

Amazon’s plans to launch the first prototype satellites for its Project Kuiper broadband internet constellation have changed for the second time in a year — and once again, rocket development snags are the reason.

The revised plans call for KuiperSat-1 and KuiperSat-2 to be sent into low Earth orbit by a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, with launch set for no earlier than Sept. 26 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The spacecraft are meant to test the systems and processes that Amazon will use for thousands of satellites designed to provide global internet access. Production of those satellites is scheduled to begin this year at a 172,000-square-foot factory in Kirkland, Wash.

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LeoStella will be supersizing its small satellites

Illustration: Satellite based on LeoStella's LS-300 bus
An artist’s conception shows a satellite based on LeoStella’s LS-300 bus. (LeoStella Illustration)

Tukwila, Wash.-based LeoStella is unveiling its latest, greatest platform for small satellites, which should hit a sweet spot for future manufacturing contracts.

LeoStella, which is a joint venture co-owned by European satellite manufacturer Thales Alenia Space and a geospatial data analysis company called BlackSky, started out in 2018 building Earth observation satellites for BlackSky’s Global constellation.

LeoStella’s LS-100 spacecraft platform, which is known in the space industry as a bus, was right-sized for those 120-pound (55-kilogram) satellites. But that was about as much mass as the LS-100 bus could accommodate.

When BlackSky came up with a more capable payload for its Gen3 satellites, LeoStella boosted its bus design to handle the added mass. Its LS-200 bus is suitable for satellites with a total weight of 330 pounds (150 kilograms), including 130 pounds (60 kilograms) of payload.

Now there’s a growing demand for a bigger class of small satellites, and LeoStella’s LS-300 bus is designed to serve that demand. The LS-300 design, unveiled in conjunction with this week’s Small Satellite Conference in Utah, can be used for satellites weighing 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms), with half of that mass available for the satellite’s payload.

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Amazon’s Project Kuiper plans satellite processing facility

Illustration: Amazon Project Kuiper satellite processing facility
An artist’s conception shows Project Kuiper’s satellite processing facility in Florida. (Amazon Illustration)

Construction is underway for a $120 million facility in Florida that will process Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellites for launch — marking one more giant leap toward creating the company’s global broadband internet constellation.

Details about the facility came to light today at a ceremony hosted by Amazon and Space Florida, the state’s aerospace industry development agency, at Kennedy Space Center’s Launch and Landing Facility. That former space shuttle landing strip where Amazon’s 100,000-square-foot facility will take shape in the months ahead.

The construction project complements Amazon’s efforts to create a 172,000-square-foot satellite production facility in Kirkland, Wash., which will turn out thousands of satellites for Project Kuiper. Today Amazon said that facility will begin production by the end of this year.

Amazon’s plans call for setting up a 3,236-satellite constellation, with at least half of those satellites launched by mid-2026. The resulting network is meant to provide broadband internet access for tens of millions of people around the world who are currently underserved — and will facilitate satellite-based offerings from Amazon Web Services and the Seattle-based company’s other divisions.

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