Amazon’s about to throw its hat into the space internet ring: Project Kuiper is launching its first 27 satellites next week, setting the stage for a showdown with Starlink.
Slated for liftoff on Wednesday, April 9th at 12pm ET from Cape Canaveral, the KA-01 mission—short for Kuiper Atlas 1—will hitch a ride on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, weather and tech willing.
Amazon’s got 80 launch missions lined up with outfits like Arianespace, Blue Origin, and even SpaceX to deliver its 3,200 satellites into low earth orbit (LEO), promising high-speed, low-latency internet “later this year” to practically anywhere on Earth.
To tap into Amazon’s space-based internet, users will need terminal antennas. Amazon previewed a seven-inch square dish in 2023, aiming for speeds up to 100Mbps. Larger dishes for homes and businesses will target up to 1Gbps. Amazon wants to produce the terminals “for less than $400 each.”
The system will offer terminals for mobile, residential, and enterprise use. Cruising at 17,000 mph (27,359 km/h) at an altitude of 392 miles (630km), the first-generation Project Kuiper satellites will circle the planet every 90 minutes. For comparison, SpaceX’s Starlink constellation already has over 7,000 LEO satellites since 2019.
Amazon is also trying to be a good neighbor in space: the KA-01 satellites sport a “dielectric mirror film unique to Kuiper” to minimize sunlight reflection and appease ground-based astronomers.
“We’ve done extensive testing on the ground to prepare for this first mission, but there are some things you can only learn in flight, and this will be the first time we’ve flown our final satellite design and the first time we’ve deployed so many satellites at once,” said Rajeev Badyal, vice president of Project Kuiper.
