Amazon on Friday launched the first two test satellites in Project Kuiper, the company’s low-Earth-orbit satellite-broadband initiative.
The Protoflight mission marked the first attempt by Amazon
AMZN,
to challenge SpaceX’s Starlink in the satellite space. The Amazon satellites, KuiperSat-1 and KuiperSat-2, launched atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
KuiperSat-1 and KuiperSat-2 are the first iterations of more than 3,200 satellites that Project Kuiper plans to manufacture and deploy over the next six years, according to Amazon.
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“We’ve done extensive testing here in our lab and have a high degree of confidence in our satellite design, but there’s no substitute for on-orbit testing,” Rajeev Badyal, Project Kuiper’s vice president of technology, said in a statement this week. “This is Amazon’s first time putting satellites into space, and we’re going to learn an incredible amount regardless of how the mission unfolds.”
The Protoflight mission will test the satellites, customer terminals and the system’s ground-based communication network. Once the testing mission is complete, Amazon plans to “actively de-orbit” both satellites before they ultimately burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere.
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Amazon shares rose 1.6% Friday, outpacing the S&P 500 index’s
SPX
gain of 1.4%.
ULA was set up in 2006 as a joint venture between Boeing Co.
BA,
and Lockheed Martin Corp.
LMT,
Boeing shares rose 1% Friday, and Lockheed Martin’s stock rose 1.1%.
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