TECH: Amazon orders up to 83 launches for its Project Kuiper internet satellites.

Ama­zon needs part­ners if it’s going to trans­port its Project Kuiper inter­net satel­lites to space, and the tech mam­moth now has them lined up. The com­pa­ny has reached deals with Ari­ane­space, ULA and its close sup­port­er Blue Ori­gin to offer as numer­ous as 83 launch­es for Project Kuiper over the com­ing five years. The arrange­ments will let Ama­zon field the” maturity“of its satel­lites, and is appar­ent­ly the largest mar­ketable launch deal to date.

ULA will give the utmost launch­es, with 48 Atlas and Vul­can Cen­taur rock­ets fer­ry­ing satel­lites into orbit. Ari­ane­space’s Ari­ane 6 will deliv­er satel­lites across 18 launch­es. Blue Ori­gin will give just 12 launch­es aboard New Glenn, although there will be options for over to 15 fresh flights.

There was no men­tion of who would give the first launch, or a nar­row­er time­frame for when that mis­sion will do. Ama­zon expects to emplace its first two pro­to­type satel­lites by the end of this year.
It’s no sur­prise that Ama­zon would land such a large deal,however.However, it needs guar­an­tees that its satel­lite con­stel­la­tion will launch in a time­ly fash­ion — SpaceX has for­mer­ly sta­tioned over 2, 300 satel­lites to date, If Ama­zon is going to con­tend with SpaceX’s Star­link. These deals let Ama­zon con­cen­trate on get­ting Project Kuiper ready for ser­vice, and spare it the per­son­al­i­ty of ask­ing its main rival SpaceX for help with any launches.