Amazon strikes deal with SpaceX for satellite launch partnership

• Amazon has struck a deal with SpaceX to use Falcon 9 rockets to launch Amazon’s low-orbit satellites.
• Financial terms of the deal between the satellite Internet competitors were not disclosed.
• The rockets are scheduled to launch in 2025 to support Amazon’s Kuiper project.

Satellite internet rivals Amazon and SpaceX have signed a deal to launch satellites supporting Amazon’s Kuiper project.

Three launches of SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 rockets are scheduled for early and mid-2025, it said Friday. statement from Amazon, although the financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

According to an Amazon statement, launches with SpaceX rockets will increase the company’s ability to support the full deployment of its low-Earth orbit satellites, which are scheduled to begin in the first half of 2024.

As part of its $10 billion plan to create a constellation of satellites to rival SpaceX’s Starlink, Amazon also announced partnerships with Arianespace, United Launch Alliance and Jeff Bezos’ aerospace manufacturing company Blue Origin for up to 83 launches to carry the majority of its satellites. Satellites in orbit.

An Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider that while the previously announced launch contracts will provide enough capacity to launch the majority of the company’s planned portfolio, “we have always planned to add more capacity to support our long-term deployment schedule, and these launches are part of that strategy.” “

In response to breaking news on X, Twitter, formerly SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said: “SpaceX launches competing satellite systems with no preference for its own satellites. Fair and square.”

SpaceX representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

Two prototypes for Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellite constellation, a direct competitor to SpaceX’s Starlink, were launched in early October. The prototype launches of KuiperSat-1 and KuiperSat-2 have been postponed from late 2022 due to changes made to the delivery system of the rockets that launch the devices.

The prototypes — which Amazon said helped validate the design and network architecture — are the first of more than 3,200 satellites scheduled to launch over the next six years that Amazon plans to use to provide orbital broadband internet.

Starlink began launching satellites in 2019 and has more than 4,000 satellites in orbit, with plans to eventually build a constellation of about 42,000 satellites.

In September the company Announce It has achieved Internet connectivity on all seven continents, providing high-speed Internet to more than two million people in 60 countries.