United Launch Alliance
Amazon announced Monday that it will launch its first Project Kuiper satellites in a low-Earth orbit on an Atlas V rocket.
The announcement provides concrete evidence that the ambitious internet-from-space project is making progress. It’s also noteworthy for the choice of launch vehicle – Amazon does not use the New Glenn rocket, developed by Jeff Bezos’ rocket company Blue Origin.
Amazon did not say when the first launch would take place, but the company said it had contracted with United Launch Alliance for nine launches to begin expanding its constellation of 3,236 low-Earth satellites. A spokesman declined to say how many satellites each Atlas V rocket could launch.
In a blog post, Amazon said that ULA’s Atlas V rocket was chosen for its high reliability. The Atlas V missions begin from Space Launch Complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
“We’m determined to make affordable broadband a reality for customers and communities around the world,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon. “ULA is a fantastic partner that has launched dozens of missions for commercial and government clients, and we are grateful for their support of Kuiper.”
With the Atlas V launch vehicle, Amazon has chosen an American rocket that ranks second in flying experience among active boosters. The Atlas V rocket launched 85 times, compared to 113 missions flown by SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. Although SpaceX’s vehicle would have cost less, it seems unlikely that Amazon would support a competitor in the race to establish a satellite Internet constellation, as SpaceX does with its Starlink system.
In United Launch Alliance, Bezos has a partner and a competitor. As part of a long-standing agreement, Blue Origin is building the BE-4 rocket engines that will power ULA’s next-generation rocket, the Vulcan.
However, Blue Origin is also developing its own large rocket, New Glenn, which will also use BE-4 engines to propel its first phase. The Vulcan and New Glenn rockets will compete directly for national safety launches as well as commercial satellites.
Choice of rockets
Based on its license with the Federal Communications Commission, Amazon must launch at least 50 percent of its proposed constellation by July 2026. News reports from Amazon and United Launch Alliance are silent about choosing the Atlas V instead of New Glenn or Vulcan to get started. launch satellites before this deadline. “We need several launch vehicles and launch partners to support our deployment schedule,” reads the company’s blog post.
The Atlas V vehicle uses Russian engines and will be phased out in the next few years. However, ULA has enough of the RD-180 engines on hand to support more than a dozen commercial flights, and aside from the launch of the Starliner spacecraft for Boeing, the Atlas V had relatively few private flights prior to this project Kuiper announcement.
It is quite possible that Blue Origin’s New Glenn will not be completed in time, at least for the initial deployment of the constellation. Blue Origin recently announced that New Glenn will only make its debut launch in the fourth quarter of 2022, and it is widely expected that the date will slip at least early in 2023.
As for Vulcan, it should be ready sooner than New Glenn. ULA chief Tory Bruno said the company is on track to launch Vulcan this year, but sources suggest the goal is too optimistic. However, the rocket should be in commercial service by late 2022 or 2023, and ULA has indicated that it costs less than the Atlas V rocket. It is therefore interesting that Amazon chose the Atlas V for the initial launch of Project Kuiper.
Amazon says it has invested $ 10 billion in Project Kuiper and that more than 500 people are now working on the project. In addition to developing satellites, the company says it is focused on designing a ‘compact, inexpensive’ client-terminal antenna used to send and receive Internet signals from space.
When it comes to using satellites in orbit, Amazon is behind at least two competitors. SpaceX, which uses the Falcon 9 launch vehicle, has already launched nearly 1,400 Starlink satellites operating in a low-Earth orbit and launching a “beta” program for some customers in remote areas of North America. OneWeb has 146 satellites in orbit, largely thanks to Russian Soyuz launch vehicles, and it hopes to launch commercial service late this year.