Artist renderings of the businesses’ rockets, from left to proper: New Glenn, Vulcan Centaur, and Ariane 6.
Blue Origin / United Launch Alliance / Arianespace
Amazon on Tuesday introduced what it says is the largest rocket deal within the industrial house business’s historical past, signing on with three firms for as much as 83 launches of its Undertaking Kuiper web satellites.
The expertise big signed contracts for 38 launches with United Launch Alliance (ULA) – a three way partnership of Boeing and Lockheed Martin; 18 launches with European firm Arianespace; and 12 launches with Blue Origin, with an choice for as many as 15 extra launches with the non-public enterprise that is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Undertaking Kuiper is Amazon’s plan to build a network of 3,236 satellites in low Earth orbit, to supply high-speed web to wherever on the earth. The FCC in 2020 approved Amazon’s system, which the corporate has mentioned it can “make investments greater than $10 billion” to construct.
Amazon is about to start testing a pair of Kuiper prototype satellites with a launch scheduled for late this yr, launching on ABL Space’s RS1 rocket, earlier than transferring on to launch operational satellites. Though Amazon has not mentioned when the Kuiper launch marketing campaign will start, FCC guidelines require the corporate to deploy half of its deliberate satellites inside six years – that means about 1,600 in orbit by July 2026.
“We nonetheless have numerous work forward, however the workforce has continued to hit milestone after milestone throughout each facet of our satellite tv for pc system. These launch agreements replicate our unimaginable dedication and perception in Undertaking Kuiper,” Dave Limp, Amazon senior vp of units and providers, mentioned in a press release.
The phrases of the contracts introduced Tuesday weren’t disclosed.
ULA will use its Vulcan rockets for the 38 Kuiper launches, along with the nine Atlas V rocket launches for Kuiper that Amazon purchased last year. ULA’s Vulcan rocket has but to launch, however its debut mission is about for late this yr. Whereas ULA has not disclosed the bottom value of a Vulcan launch, the U.S. authorities bought launches on the rocket for about $112 million every.
Arianespace will fly its 18 Kuiper missions on its coming Ariane 6 rockets, that are additionally set to debut later this yr. The European rocket builder has additionally not specified Ariane 6’s value construction, however has beforehand mentioned it was focusing on a base price ticket of $77 million per launch.
Blue Origin will use its New Glenn rockets to fly the 12 Kuiper missions it can host. Whereas Blue Origin doesn’t presently have an official goal date for New Glenn’s first launch, CNBC has previously reported the rocket is expected to debut in 2024 or later. The corporate has not publicly revealed a value for New Glenn launches, however an Arianespace estimate two years in the past put the Blue Origin rocket at $68 million per launch. Whereas each firms have been based by Bezos, Blue Origin is separate from Amazon.
In complete, Amazon’s Kuiper launch contracts are simply price billions of {dollars}, although it isn’t clear what influence aggressive bidding and doable bulk order reductions would have on the general pricing. All 4 firms declined to touch upon the associated fee.
Taking over SpaceX
Notably absent from Amazon’s launch payroll is probably the most lively U.S. rocket firm: Elon Musk’s SpaceX. However, even with Musk’s pledge to launch rivals, Amazon and SpaceX have long sparred in front of federal regulators over their respective satellite internet networks, Kuiper and Starlink.
SpaceX has established a large lead over Amazon within the race to supply web from house, having launched about 2,000 Starlink satellites so far, serving about 250,000 total subscribers.
However Amazon is betting on its international footprint to shut that hole. The corporate says the Kuiper community “will leverage Amazon’s international logistics and operations footprint, in addition to Amazon Internet Companies’ (AWS) networking and infrastructure.”
Amazon has a leg-up in addressing one key impediment to inexpensive satellite tv for pc web, too: the antennas that prospects want to attach. Amazon has touted its “expertise producing low-cost units and providers like Echo and Kindle” to make the worth of the service “accessible.”
Amazon has but to provide a lot details about the Kuiper satellites, resembling mass or energy, and it did not specify the variety of satellites launching on every rocket. However the firm’s design is probably going near being completed, if not finalized already, as Amazon introduced it is working with Swiss firm Past Gravity to construct satellite tv for pc dispensers to deploy the Kuiper spacecraft.
