Satellite-Internet Race Heats Up As Amazon Secures 83 Rocket Launches

 Satellite-Internet Race Heats Up As Amazon Secures 83 Rocket Launches

 BY TYLER DURDEN TUESDAY, APR 05, 2022 - 03:20 PM

 The satellite internet space race is about to heat up as Amazon Inc. announced Tuesday one of the largest rocket deals in the commercial space industry's history, signing three companies for 83 launches over five years to deploy a 3,236 low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation.

Amazon's Project Kuiper plans to take on Elon Musk's Starlink satellite internet service. Kuiper aims to provide high-speed, low-latency broadband to customers in rural places. Like Starlink, Amazon will have affordable customer terminals and a ground-based communications network. 

"Project Kuiper will provide fast, affordable broadband to tens of millions of customers in unserved and underserved communities around the world," said Dave Limp, Senior Vice President for Amazon Devices & Services.

No timetable was given when Arianespace, Blue Origin, and United Launch Alliance would begin launching the LEO constellation of 3,236 satellites. However, Amazon is preparing to begin testing a pair of Kuiper prototype satellites in the second half of this year. According to FCC documents, Kuiper is expected to have half of its satellites in LEO by 2026.

  • Arianespace: 18 launches of Europe's Ariane 6 rocket
  • Blue Origin: 12 launches via the New Glenn rocket, with options for 15 additional launches
  • United Launch Alliance: 38 launches via the Vulcan rocket

"We still have lots of work ahead, but the team has continued to hit milestone after milestone across every aspect of our satellite system. These launch agreements reflect our incredible commitment and belief in Project Kuiper, and we're proud to be working with such an impressive lineup of partners to deliver on our mission," Limp said. 

Kuiper will compete against Musk's Starlink internet service. Starlink already has more than 1,900 satellites in LEO and 250,000 subscribers. The next-generation satellite internet has already provided unprecedented speeds for people in rural areas and even in warzones. Here's a map of where Starlink is available in the US. 

Internet from space appears to be the future, and so far, Starlink is the only provider for consumers, but Amazon's Kuiper is not far behind. 

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/satellite-internet-race-heats-amazon-secures-83-rocket-launches

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Report: World’s 1st remote brain surgery via 5G network performed in China

World’s 1st remote brain surgery via 5G network performed in China Published time: 17 Mar, 2019 13:12 ·           A Chinese surgeon has performed the world’s first remote brain surgery using 5G technology, with the patient 3,000km away from the operating doctor. Dr. Ling Zhipei remotely implanted a neurostimulator into his patient’s brain on Saturday, Chinese state-run media  reports . The surgeon manipulated the instruments in the Beijing-based PLAGH hospital from a clinic subsidiary on the southern Hainan island, located 3,000km away. The surgery is said to have lasted three hours and ended successfully. The patient, suffering from Parkinson’s disease, is said to be feeling well after the pioneering operation. The doctor used a computer connected to the next-generation 5G network developed by Chinese tech giant Huawei. The new device enabled a near real-time connection, according to Dr. Ling.  “You barely feel that the patient is 3,000 kilometers away,”  he said.
Read more

Visualizing The Power Of The World's Supercomputers

Visualizing The Power Of The World's Supercomputers   BY TYLER DURDEN FRIDAY, JAN 21, 2022 - 04:15 AM   A supercomputer is a machine that is built to handle billions, if not trillions of calculations at once. Each supercomputer is actually made up of many individual computers (known as nodes) that work together in parallel. A common metric for measuring the performance of these machines is  flops , or  floating point operations per second . In this visualization,  Visual Capitalist's Marcus Lu uses  November 2021 data from  TOP500  to visualize the computing power of the world’s top five supercomputers. For added context, a number of modern consumer devices were included in the comparison. Ranking by Teraflops Because supercomputers can achieve over one quadrillion flops, and consumer devices are much less powerful, we’ve used  teraflops  as our comparison metric. 1 teraflop = 1,000,000,000,000 (1 trillion) flops. Supercomputer Fugaku  was completed in March 202
Read more

BMW traps alleged thief by remotely locking him in car

BMW traps alleged thief by remotely locking him in car Stealer's Wheel? Seattle police department quotes "Watchmen" movie in a recap of the recent arrest. Tech Culture by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper December 4, 2016 5:00 PM PST It's maybe the most satisfying arrest we can imagine. Seattle police caught an alleged car thief by enlisting the help of car maker BMW to both track and then remotely lock the luckless criminal in the very car he was trying to steal. Jonah Spangenthal-Lee, deputy director of communications for the Seattle Police Department, posted a witty summary of the event on the SPD's blog on Wednesday. Turns out if you're inside a stolen car, it's perhaps not the best time to take a nap. "A car thief awoke from a sound slumber Sunday morning (Nov. 27) to find he had been remotely locked inside a stolen BMW, just as Seattle police officers were bearing down on him," Spangenthal-Lee wrote. The suspect found a ke
Read more