Amazon's Set To Launch Its Prototype Internet Satellites Early Next Year (theverge.com) 22
In a press release on Wednesday, Amazon said it will launch two prototype satellites for its Project Kuiper satellite internet constellation in early 2023. They will be riding into orbit on a Vulcan Centaur rocket from the United Launch Alliance (ULA). The Verge reports: The company says the launch will let it perform tests on its satellite network technology with data from space and that the data will "help finalize design, deployment, and operational plans for our commercial satellite system." The timeframe marks a slight delay from Amazon's original plan; last year, the company announced it would launch the prototypes in Q4 of 2022, using a completely different rocket from a company called ABL Space Systems.
Early 2023 isn't too far away, but there are still a lot of things that have to go right for the launch to happen on schedule. For one, Amazon needs to actually finish building the satellites, which its press release says will be completed later this year. The rocket also isn't done yet -- ULA said in a press release on Wednesday that it expects to have Vulcan fully assembled by November and tested by December -- for now, though, it still has to install the engines. It's not exactly a proven launch platform, either; this will be the rocket's first flight.
Both companies have deadlines to meet. As The Washington Post points out, ULA has to launch Vulcan twice before Q4 2023 to prove that it's reliable enough to carry out missions for the US Space Force. Meanwhile, Amazon has to launch half of its satellites by 2026 to keep its FCC license. That's further away than the end of next year, but given that Amazon's constellation is set to be made up of 3,236 satellites, that's going to require quite a few launches in the next few years. Thirty-eight of them are set to use the Vulcan, while several others will be with rockets from Arianespace and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin. (Fun fact: the BE-4 engines that Vulcan uses are also from Blue Origin.) Notably absent from its list of partners is SpaceX, which other satellite providers like Lynk and AST SpaceMobile have used to launch equipment into space.
Early 2023 isn't too far away, but there are still a lot of things that have to go right for the launch to happen on schedule. For one, Amazon needs to actually finish building the satellites, which its press release says will be completed later this year. The rocket also isn't done yet -- ULA said in a press release on Wednesday that it expects to have Vulcan fully assembled by November and tested by December -- for now, though, it still has to install the engines. It's not exactly a proven launch platform, either; this will be the rocket's first flight.
Both companies have deadlines to meet. As The Washington Post points out, ULA has to launch Vulcan twice before Q4 2023 to prove that it's reliable enough to carry out missions for the US Space Force. Meanwhile, Amazon has to launch half of its satellites by 2026 to keep its FCC license. That's further away than the end of next year, but given that Amazon's constellation is set to be made up of 3,236 satellites, that's going to require quite a few launches in the next few years. Thirty-eight of them are set to use the Vulcan, while several others will be with rockets from Arianespace and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin. (Fun fact: the BE-4 engines that Vulcan uses are also from Blue Origin.) Notably absent from its list of partners is SpaceX, which other satellite providers like Lynk and AST SpaceMobile have used to launch equipment into space.
How Much Per Month? (Score:3)
That is all we care about.
More space junk (Score:5, Insightful)
Kessler Syndrome, here we come
Re: (Score:3)
Kessler Syndrome, here we come
NASA's next big mission shouldn't be going to the Moon or Mars. It should be cleaning up the orbital space. Robots could push satellites into the atmosphere so that they can burn up. The ones that are too big to burn up could be pushed to a defined, confined space in orbit. A "space boneyard", similar to what the Air Force does when they store old aircraft in the desert, for either later use or destruction. Exploration is great, but it's past time for some serious housekeeping, too.
2023, Vulcan Centaur and BE-4 (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not sure they're going to meet their targets here
The Vulcan Centaur requires two Blue Origin BE-4 engines per rocket. At least initially, those engines will be disposable (or if they decide to test recovery, they may as well be considered disposable), so for the first few launches they'll need a good supply of engines
After over a decade of development, Blue Origin has supplied 1 (one) working engine to ULA. Blue Origin has only manufactured one working BE-4 engine that passed flightworthiness tests.
Blue Origin I will suspect will struggle to get enough engines produced to launch many Vulcans in the next ~14 months, particularly Amazon's pet satellite projects (there's other critical customers in the queue too)
But we shall see.
Re: (Score:2)
I read that there were going to use other launch partners as well, just not SpaceX.
Re: (Score:3)
I read that there were going to use other launch partners as well, just not SpaceX.
No SpaceX at all - they're Blue Origin's direct competitor and there's not a lot of love lost there. As per the article they have flights booked on ULA's Vulcan Centaur (using a BE-4 Blue Origin engine), Blue Origin's New Glenn (which doesn't exist yet, but will use BE-4 Blue Origin engines) and (French) Arianespace's Ariane 6 (doesn't exist yet and expected to be quite expensive compared to pretty much everyone else).
Two of the three (New Glenn, Ariane 6) don't exist yet, two of the three (Vulcan, New Glen
Dyson sphere (Score:5, Funny)
Will replace Starlink (Score:1)
It has been revealed Elon Musk is now pleading poverty [washingtonexaminer.com] and has said he will not continue to provide Starlink service to Ukraine unless the U.S. government hands over more taxpayer money [reuters.com].
Conveniently, this occurred after Musk said Ukraine should roll over and accede to Russia's invasion [yahoo.com] and after Musk recently spoke to Putin. Musk has also prohibited Starlink from being used by Ukrainian forces inside occupied Crimea [businessinsider.com].
Re: Will replace Starlink (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I think that Elon underestimated long this war was going to last. His little PR stunt blew up into a major project with an 80 million dollar price tag, and now he's trying to back out of it.
Re: (Score:2)
Do we really need yet another Satellite ISP? (Score:2)
I mean, we already have Starlink and Hughesnet up there, along with a few others that aren't available in the US. Not to mention that most people get their Internet access from their cable or phone company.
Is this going to end up like Sirius and XM, where they end up having to merge 10 years from now because they can't get enough customers individually?
Re: Do we really need yet another Satellite ISP? (Score:2)
I think SpaceX would achieve its end goal long before there are any viable competitors in that market. And Hughes isn't really a competitor to starlink. Neither is viasat or any of the others. GEO internet service is flatly obsoleted by Starlink. They're a dialup service living in a broadband world.
Good way to lose money (Score:3)
SpaceX's Starlink is profitable because of the revolutionary ability to re-use the Falcon 9 rockets. Plus they obviously give themselves a discount and do not need to make a profit from these launches, as the profit will be realized from the Starlink service itself.
Amazon's Blue Origin is still sub-orbital, at least until 2023 at the earliest (and that is just preliminary tests), so they cannot directly launch their own satellites. Paying a 3rd party to launch these kinds of missions on non-reusable rockets is at least an order of magnitude more expensive than SpaceX's internal costs to launch on their reusable system.
In other words Amazon will spend vastly more money on a system that essentially will not ever recoup its costs, in order to maintain parity and stay in the game since their own space launch technology is so far behind SpaceX. Really it's a chicken and egg problem, where the ability to launch into orbit inexpensively is the egg that must come before the chicken.
Re: Good way to lose money (Score:3)
SpaceX has one mission underpinning everything: Put people on Mars. The whole idea behind Starlink and every other SpaceX product is to make the company profitable so that it can develop the needed technology to achieve its mission. This is also why we won't have an IPO: Wall street would likely view mars as unprofitable, and would put immense pressure away from that mission.
Think I'll pass. (Score:2)
With their history of privacy invasion, I'll say no thank you. Alexa, Ring, Roomba have all demonstrated they cannot be trusted.
My only choices for eventual sailing internet... (Score:2)
Are Elon or Jeff... FML, I'll just get iridium and load weather data, guess I'll stuff the tablet full of things to do.
FFS just stop trying to copy Elon (Score:1)
Will Amazonâ(TM)s satellites have lasers? (Score:2)
You know, for communicating between themselves, not for shooting down Starlink satellites?