{"id":46061,"date":"2023-07-22T20:19:13","date_gmt":"2023-07-22T12:19:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/amazon-is-getting-ready-to-launch-a-lot-of-broadband-satellites\/"},"modified":"2023-07-22T20:19:13","modified_gmt":"2023-07-22T12:19:13","slug":"amazon-is-getting-ready-to-launch-a-lot-of-broadband-satellites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/amazon-is-getting-ready-to-launch-a-lot-of-broadband-satellites\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon is getting ready to launch a lot of broadband satellites"},"content":{"rendered":"

Within a few years, Amazon hopes to be building and launching up to 80 satellites per month to populate the company\u2019s Kuiper constellation, a $10 billion network that is similar to fleets already operated by SpaceX and OneWeb providing Internet connectivity around the world.<\/p>\n

In the next six months, Amazon plans to begin production of operational Kuiper satellites at a new 172,000-square-foot factory in Kirkland, Washington. On Friday, officials from Amazon and the Florida government announced that a 100,000-square-foot facility under construction at NASA\u2019s Kennedy Space Center will serve as a satellite processing facility dedicated to the Kuiper program.<\/p>\n

Inside this facility near the old space shuttle landing strip, engineers will mount Kuiper satellites onto huge orbital deployer mechanisms standing several stories tall, then encapsulate the structure inside the nose cones of their rockets. The fully integrated payload compartments will then move out to launch pads operated by United Launch Alliance and Blue Origin\u2014the space company established by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos\u2014at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, a few miles away.<\/p>\n

The new structure is being built on land leased by NASA to Space Florida, a state-funded economic development agency focused on luring commercial space companies to the Sunshine State. It has a high bay that will stand about 100 feet (30 meters) tall, big enough to house the payload fairings of ULA and Blue Origin\u2019s heavy-lift rockets. Amazon says it is investing about $120 million in the new facility, which is sized to accommodate up to three simultaneous launch campaigns.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the places that makes this facility so unique and such a great place to do business is the proximity to the launch providers and to the launch sites,\u201d said Brian Huseman, Amazon\u2019s vice president of public policy.<\/p>\n

Amazon\u2019s Project Kuiper is one of several large \u201cmega-constellations\u201d either already in space or nearing launch. It\u2019s a competitor to SpaceX\u2019s Starlink network, which already has more than 4,000 satellites in orbit, and OneWeb\u2019s broadband constellation, numbering more than 600 spacecraft.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

If you track this industry, you\u2019ll know that SpaceX is regularly launching its Starlink satellites in large batches aboard the company\u2019s own Falcon 9 rocket. These flights from Cape Canaveral and from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, make up about half of SpaceX\u2019s missions over the last couple of years, with Starlink launches flying about once per week, on average.<\/p>\n

Amazon\u2019s projected launch rate is almost as ambitious. The company aims to deploy about half of its 3,236 satellites by July 2026, a deadline to maintain network authorization from the Federal Communications Commission. That would require at least two launches per month, and perhaps more, from Amazon\u2019s stable of launch service providers.<\/p>\n

The expected launch cadence requires a dedicated building to prepare the satellites for launch, Amazon officials said.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Amazon hasn\u2019t released any pictures or artist\u2019s illustrations of their Kuiper satellites, but this picture of one of the spacecraft\u2019s shipping containers provides a sense of the size of each one. <\/p>\n

Credit:
\n Amazon<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

Last year, Amazon signed the largest commercial launch contract in history, snatching up rides on ULA\u2019s new Vulcan rocket, Blue Origin\u2019s New Glenn, and Arianespace\u2019s Ariane 6 launcher. All told, Amazon has purchased 77 launches: 38 Vulcan launches, plus nine flights on ULA\u2019s soon-to-retire Atlas V, 18 Ariane 6 rockets, and 12 New Glenn missions, with a contract option for 15 more.<\/p>\n

That will cover Kuiper\u2019s launch service needs for its 3,200 satellites. But all those rockets, except for the Atlas V, are still in development. ULA\u2019s Vulcan appears like it will fly the first of Amazon\u2019s crop of launch vehicles, probably followed by the European-built Ariane 6, and then Blue Origin\u2019s New Glenn.<\/p>\n

SpaceX was not part of the launch contracts, and that wasn\u2019t a surprise since Amazon\u2019s Kuiper network will compete with Starlink. But OneWeb, another satellite broadband provider, inked a deal with SpaceX last year to launch its satellites on Falcon 9 rockets after launches on Russian rockets fell through in the wake of Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Tired of waiting?<\/h2>\n

The first two prototype satellites for this new Kuiper constellation have been sitting in a climate-controlled clean room near Cape Canaveral, Florida, since March, waiting for a ride to space on the first test flight of United Launch Alliance\u2019s new Vulcan rocket, the replacement for the Atlas V and Delta IV launch vehicles. Amazon shipped the two satellites, believed to be in the range of a few hundred kilograms, from a factory near Seattle to Florida in preparation for a planned May launch on the Vulcan rocket.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

But the Vulcan rocket\u2019s debut has been delayed until late this year, something that\u2019s not unusual for a brand-new launch vehicle. That has left the payloads assigned to the first Vulcan launch in limbo. Besides Amazon\u2019s Kuiper test satellites, the first Vulcan flight is due to loft a commercial Moon lander from a Pittsburgh-company named Astrobotic. The payloads are all ready, but the rocket is not.<\/p>\n

Astrobotic\u2019s lunar lander remains in Pittsburgh and will ship to Florida once ULA sets a target launch date. That will only happen after engineers complete testing of the Vulcan rocket\u2019s Centaur upper stage, following an explosion caused by a hydrogen leak during a ground test earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Steve Metayer, Amazon\u2019s vice president of Kuiper production operations, said the first two Kuiper satellites are \u201cquietly sleeping\u201d in a storage room in Florida. \u201cThey\u2019ve been in their dispenser ready to go, just waiting for our launch provider to give us a ride to space.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the plan to launch the first two Kuiper testbeds on the inaugural Vulcan rocket remains the company\u2019s \u201cplan of record.\u201d But Metayer added: \u201cObviously, we\u2019re always working with our partners to find other options.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of those alternatives, an Amazon official said, may be to move the two Kuiper prototypes to one of the Atlas V rockets Amazon has already booked. ULA has several Atlas Vs already delivered to Cape Canaveral, and those rockets are awaiting future missions.<\/p>\n

There may be an opportunity for ULA to fit in an Atlas V mission for Amazon in the fall after some of the company\u2019s other customers\u2014namely Viasat and Boeing\u2019s Starliner crew capsule\u2014ran into delays. \u201cULA is a great partner for us. We\u2019re always looking to benefit Kuiper. That is an option,\u201d the Amazon official told Ars.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

A launch for the Kuiper prototypes in the fall \u201cwould be nice timing,\u201d the official added. \u201cIt would be ahead of December. Anything ahead of December right now would be beneficial to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the Kuiper program won\u2019t hit a roadblock if the test satellites remain on the ground a little longer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe test satellites really don\u2019t pace us,\u201d Metayer said. \u201cWe can simulate launch dynamic loads in our laboratories. We can simulate, in our chambers, the space environment. Other than the distances and communicating through the atmosphere, we\u2019ve tested on the ground everything we needed to vet out.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re charging ahead with our production design that we have,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ll start production of those at the end of this year. This prototype mission will give us knowledge and more confidence, but we\u2019re going ahead with production.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new factory in Kirkland, Washington, will churn out four satellites per day when it\u2019s humming along at peak efficiency, according to Metayer. That\u2019s 20 satellites per week. Last year, launch industry officials said the Ariane 6 rocket will carry between 35 and 40 Kuiper satellites on each of Arianespace\u2019s missions for Amazon; the Vulcan Centaur can accommodate 45 Kuiper satellites per launch; and the New Glenn can haul 61 per flight.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Graphic<\/p>\n

Meet the Project Kuiper launch team.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n Amazon<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

The first two Kuiper test satellites were originally contracted to fly on a new rocket from the startup launch company ABL Space Systems. Last year, Amazon moved the satellites off of ABL\u2019s rocket and onto the first Vulcan launch with ULA.<\/p>\n

Despite the rocket delays, Amazon is sticking with its three launch contractors, but the company has intentionally designed the Kuiper satellites to fit on a range of launch vehicles.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will have a lot of launch appetite for a long time,\u201d a Project Kuiper official said, adding that Amazon wouldn\u2019t rule out launching with SpaceX or another company in the future. \u201cWe have the first 77 covered. There will be more after that. We\u2019re kind of looking at everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

\u201cIdeally, we want a heavy-lift vehicle,\u201d the official said. \u201cThat\u2019s why we\u2019re with Vulcan. That\u2019s why we signed a big contract with them. Their lift capacity is far bigger than a Falcon 9.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amazon hasn\u2019t released much detail about its satellites. Metayer said the Kuiper satellites are \u201cthree-dimensional\u201d in shape, and not flat-packed on their rockets like SpaceX\u2019s Starlink spacecraft.<\/p>\n

The 3,236 satellites currently in development are approved by the FCC to operate in mid-inclination orbits a few hundred miles above Earth, covering customers between 56 degrees north and south latitude. Some of the satellites could be re-targeted for polar orbits to enable more global coverage, a Kuiper official told Ars, but that would require another round of review and approval from federal regulators.<\/p>\n

Betting big on ULA<\/h2>\n

Amazon is helping fund a big expansion in ULA\u2019s footprint at the Florida spaceport, an effort that will double the company\u2019s launch capacity. The investment to fund the growth in ULA\u2019s capability to support Kuiper launches totals about $2 billion, with around $500 million going toward upgrades at Cape Canaveral.<\/p>\n

Those upgrades include the outfitting of a second vertical hangar and a second mobile launch platform for Vulcan rockets, alongside the integration facility and launch table already built to support the first few Vulcan missions. Having dual lanes for launch processing in Florida will allow ULA to fly as many as 25 Vulcan rockets per year, the company says. The primary Vulcan customers early on will be the US Space Force and Amazon.<\/p>\n

ULA and its subcontractors are also expanding factory space at locations around the country to produce more Vulcan engines, solid rocket boosters, and payload fairings for the Kuiper missions.<\/p>\n

A ULA official on Friday called the Kuiper contract \u201ctransformational\u201d for the company, a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin. ULA has seen its position in the US launch market eroded by SpaceX, but with Amazon\u2019s deep pockets and a lucrative launch contract with the Space Force in hand, the Vulcan rocket should have years of service ahead of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Within a few years, Amazon hopes to be building and launching up to 80 satellites per month to populate the company\u2019s Kuiper constellation, a $10 billion network that is similar to fleets already operated by SpaceX and OneWeb providing Internet connectivity around the world. In the next six months, Amazon plans to begin production of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46062,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9472,252,2361,428,276,750,4518],"class_list":["post-46061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-amazon-2","tag-broadband","tag-florida","tag-kennedy-space-center","tag-kuiper","tag-united-launch-alliance","tag-vulcan-rocket"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46061"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}