Amazon launched the first 27 satellites for its Kuiper broadband internet constellation into space from Florida on Monday.
The flight marks the start of Jeff Bezos’s delayed deployment of an internet-from-space network to rival Elon Musk’s Starlink.
The satellites are the first of 3,236 that Amazon.com Inc. plans to put into low-Earth orbit for Project Kuiper.
It is a $10 billion move first unveiled in 2019 to beam broadband internet globally for consumers, businesses, and governments—customers that SpaceX has courted for years.
Aboard an Atlas V rocket from the United Launch Alliance (ULA)—a joint effort between Boeing and Lockheed Martin—the 27 satellites blasted off at 7 p.m. EDT from the rocket company’s launch pad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Bad weather nixed an initial launch attempt on April 9.
Amazon has pitched the service as a particular benefit to rural areas where connectivity is sparse or completely absent.
The deployment of the first operational Kuiper satellites has been delayed for more than a year.
Amazon faces a deadline set by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to deploy half its satellites by mid-2026, but the delay means the company is likely to seek an extension.
The tech giant is expected to publicly confirm initial contact with all of the satellites from its mission operations center in Redmond, Washington, within the next few days.
If all goes as well, the company expects to “begin delivering service to customers later this year,” it said.
Amazon said in a 2020 FCC filing that it could begin service in some northern and southern regions at 578 satellites, with coverage expanding toward the equator as more enter orbit.
The tech giant’s Project Kuiper is an ambitious foray into space, with a late start in a market dominated by SpaceX.
But Amazon executives see the company’s extensive consumer product experience and established cloud computing business, with which Kuiper will connect, as an advantage over Musk’s offering.
Amazon launched two prototype satellites in 2023 in tests it said were successful, before de-orbiting them in 2024. It had been relatively quiet about the program’s development until announcing its first Kuiper launch plans earlier this month.
SpaceX has a unique edge being both a satellite operator and rocket launch company with its reusable Falcon 9 and Starship.
Musk’s company has sent more than 8,000 Starlink satellites into orbit since 2019.
Its deployment pace has hastened to at least one Starlink mission per week, with each rocket carrying roughly two-dozen satellites to expand the network and replace outdated satellites.
That quick pace has helped the company amass more than 5 million internet users across 125 countries.
The company has stolen a march on the global satellite communications market and won over military and intelligence agencies that have sought to use Starlink and its manufacturing line for national security programs.
But Bezos has been bullish that Kuiper can compete with Starlink, telling Reuters in a January interview that “there’s insatiable demand” for internet.
“There’s room for lots of winners there. I predict Starlink will continue to be successful, and I predict Kuiper will be successful as well,” he said.
“It will be a primarily commercial system, but there will be defense uses for these LEO [low-Earth orbit] constellations, no doubt.”
Amazon in 2023 revealed its Kuiper consumer terminals, an antenna the size of a vinyl LP that communicates with the satellites in space, as well as a smaller terminal whose size it compares to its Kindle device.
The company expects to make tens of millions of the devices, selling them for under $400 each.
The name “Project Kuiper” refers to the Kuiper Belt, a region of the solar system that exists beyond Neptune.
The belt itself is named after the late Dutch astronomer Gerard Kuiper.
