The space adventure of Jeff BezosProject Kuiper, is expected to launch on Friday, October 6 with the aim of challenging Starlink Elon Musk in the field of satellite internet.

The United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket will lift off from Florida (US) carrying two prototype satellites from Amazon’s Project Kuiper, a network that will provide high-speed internet worldwide.

As announced by the company last week, the Kuipersat-1 and Kuipersat-2 satellites have already been placed on top of the nearly 60-meter-high Atlas V 501 rocket, which will lift off from the Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral at 24:00. :00 local time (18:00 GMT), on October 6.

The two satellites, which are prototypes of the final design, will be placed in low Earth orbit, about 500 kilometers above Earth, and will allow Amazon to “test its technology in space before launching production in space is launched”. ‘, as ULA noted.

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) is an area of ​​space that extends up to 2,000 kilometers above Earth. The Project Kuiper satellites will orbit the Earth between 590 and 630 kilometers. According to officials at Jeff Bezos’ company, the proximity of satellites to the Earth’s surface means they can provide fast service to customers, making the Project Kuiper’s connectivity is effective for applications such as video calling, gaming and high-definition streaming.

The launch will be the first shipment of the future constellation of more than 3,200 satellites that the American retail giant will put into orbit from 2024 and for which it has contracted the services of ULA, as well as the firms Arianespace and Blue Origin.

The satellites will be sent into space via 92 launches, 47 of which will be carried out by ULA: nine of them using the Atlas V and 38 with the Vulcan Centaur, the new series of rockets that the company plans to launch by the end of this year. launch. this year.

U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations require that at least half of these satellites be deployed by July 2026 and the remainder by July 2029.

According to the project website, the mission of this initiative is to “bring fast and affordable broadband to underserved communities around the world.”

Musk’s Starlink

Even with Bezos’ cosmological ambitions, Elon Musk’s SpaceX remains far ahead in the mix to use space as a place to broadcast broadband internet. Starlink consists of developing a global high-speed broadband internet network on satellites orbiting the Earth.

The name refers to the Kuiper Belt, a region of the solar system located outside the eight major planets. The Kuiper Belt is named after the late Dutch astronomer Gerard Kuiper, considered by many to be the father of modern planetary science. (JO)