Amazon Has Contracted with SpaceX for Project Kuiper Rocket Launches
Jeff Bezos’s Amazon announced in a Dec. 1 press release that the company has signed a contract with SpaceX for three Falcon 9 launches.
(Seattle, Washington) In a December 1st press release, Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) announced that the company had signed a contract with SpaceX for three Falcon 9 launches to support Project Kuiper, Amazon’s low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband network.
Photo courtesy of Amazon in an April 5, 2022 press release.
In April of 2022, Amazon announced an earlier procurement of 77 heavy-lift rockets from Arianespace, Blue Origin, and United Launch Alliance (ULA) to launch the majority of the Project Kuiper satellite constellation.
“The additional launches with SpaceX offer even more capacity to support our deployment schedule,” reads Amazon’s Dec. 1 press release. “SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is a reusable, two-stage launch vehicle designed for the reliable and safe transport of people and payloads into Earth orbit and beyond, and it has completed more than 270 successful launches to date. Project Kuiper has contracted three Falcon 9 launches, and these missions are targeted to lift off beginning in mid-2025.”
Project Kuiper recently launched two prototype satellites, and tests from the mission helped to validate Amazon’s satellite design and network architecture, according to the release. Amazon expects to have enough satellites deployed to begin early customer pilots in the second half of 2024.
Starlink, the satellite internet technology made possible by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, has over 4,000 satellites in service, according to ZeroHedge. Starlink is in talks about an IPO in the second half of 2024, according to Bloomberg.
In an article published this past Sunday, ZeroHedge attributed Amazon’s recent deal with SpaceX to mounting delays faced by Blue Origin rockets.
