Amazon’s Project Kuiper this month will launch more than two dozen satellites into space, a step the company said will lead toward bringing fast, reliable internet to customers worldwide.
The mission, named “KA-01” for Kuiper Atlas 1, will launch on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.
It will deploy 27 satellites at an altitude of 280 miles above Earth, according to a statement from Amazon.
The launch, which will be livestreamed 20 minutes before liftoff, is scheduled for no earlier than 12 p.m. EDT on April 9.
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ULA will manage the launch and deployment sequence from its Advanced Spaceflight Operations Center at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Once all the satellites have separated from the rocket, the Kuiper team will manage the constellation from its 24/7 mission operations center in Redmond, Washington.
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“Our initial objective for the KA-01 mission is to deploy all of the satellites safely in orbit, which means they can independently maneuver and communicate with our team on the ground,” according to the statement. “To do so, once the satellites have successfully separated from the rocket, they will begin a series of mostly automated steps to activate onboard systems and use their electric propulsion systems to gradually ascend to their assigned orbit of 392 miles.”
The satellites will travel at a speed of more than 17,000 miles per hour on orbit and circle the planet about every 90 minutes.
While the satellites orbit, the team will send data from the internet, through its ground infrastructure, up to the satellites, and down to customer terminal antennas, and then repeat the journey in the other direction.
Project Kuiper will provide high-speed, low-latency internet to almost any location on Earth.
The satellite system will include more than 3,200 advanced low-Earth orbit satellites, and the company has already planned more than 80 launches, according to a statement.
Amazon expects to begin delivering its internet service to customers later this year.
“We’ve designed some of the most advanced communications satellites ever built, and every launch is an opportunity to add more capacity and coverage to our network,” Rajeev Badyal, vice president of Project Kuiper, wrote in the statement. “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.”
Badyal added that no matter how the mission unfolds, “this is just the start of our journey, and we have all the pieces in place to learn and adapt as we prepare to launch again and again over the coming years.”
Amazon said the satellites flying on KA-01 are a “significant upgrade” from the two prototype satellites it tested in October 2023, during its Protoflight mission.
“We have improved the performance of every system and sub-system on board, including phased array antennas, processors, solar arrays, propulsion systems, and optical inter-satellite links,” according to the statement.
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The satellites are also coated in a dielectric mirror film that reflects sunlight to make them less visible to people on the ground.
Over the next few years, Kuiper and ULA teams will coordinate seven more Atlas V launches and 38 launches on ULA’s larger Vulcan Centaur rocket, according to the statement.
An additional 30 mor more launches are planned across other launch providers, including Arianespace, Blue Origin and SpaceX.
Following KA-01, Amazon said it will continue to increase its production, processing and deployment rates.
It has already started shipping and processing satellites for its next mission; KA-02 will also use a ULA Atlas V rocket and launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
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