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Source: AFP
After delaying an earlier effort owed to atrocious weather, Amazon is preparing to motorboat its archetypal batch of Project Kuiper net satellites connected Monday, stepping into nonstop contention with Elon Musk's Starlink.
The mission, called Kuiper Atlas 1, is scheduled to assistance disconnected from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station successful Florida astatine 7:00 p.m. section clip (2300 GMT), aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket that volition transportation 27 satellites into orbit.
Weather conditions appeared 75 percent favorable.
Project Kuiper, a subsidiary of the online retail elephantine founded by Jeff Bezos, is playing catch-up with Starlink -- SpaceX's sprawling web of net satellites that has reshaped the assemblage and handed Musk important geopolitical clout.
The $10 cardinal inaugural plans to deploy 3,200 satellites into debased Earth orbit -- the portion of abstraction up to 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) supra the satellite -- with hopes of going unrecorded aboriginal this year.
Pricing has not yet been revealed, but Amazon has pledged it volition align with its estimation arsenic a low-cost retailer.
With Monday's launch, Amazon volition formally participate a crowded and fast-growing tract that includes not conscionable Starlink but different emerging players successful the outer net race.
SpaceX launched the archetypal batch of Starlink satellites successful 2019 and present boasts much than 6,750 operational units, serving implicit 5 cardinal customers worldwide -- by acold the sector's ascendant force.
Starlink has besides provided important net entree successful catastrophe and warfare zones, including Morocco aft its devastating 2023 earthquake and connected the frontlines successful Ukraine's warfare against Russia.
Amazon plans to accelerate launches successful the coming months and years, with much than 80 flights booked done United Launch Alliance (a Boeing-Lockheed Martin associated venture), France's Arianespace, Bezos's ain Blue Origin, and adjacent Musk's SpaceX.
Its satellites volition gradually articulation the swelling ranks of debased Earth orbit, alongside Starlink, Europe's OneWeb, and China's Guowang constellation.
The expanding crowding of this orbital vicinity has sparked concerns astir congestion, imaginable collisions, and disruptions to astronomical observations.
The expanding relation of backstage companies successful abstraction has besides raised thorny governmental questions, particularly arsenic Musk's power stretches beyond concern into authorities and diplomacy.
Musk has sent mixed signals connected Starlink's aboriginal relation successful Ukraine, wherever it remains captious to Kyiv's warfare effort -- a struggle that Musk state US President Donald Trump has vowed to bring to an end.
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Source: AFP
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