The two prototype satellites were deployed at an altitude of 311 miles (500 kilometers) above Earth by an Atlas V rocket, launched from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.
One of Amazon’s telemetry, tracking, and control antennas established a telemetry link with the satellite at 2.53pm on Friday, one of the first steps in Amazon’s protoflight mission.
“The launch today started a new phase of our Protoflight mission, and there’s a long way to go, but it’s an exciting milestone all the same,” said Rajeev Badyal, vice president of technology for Project Kuiper.
The first two launches are the first iterations of more than 3,200 satellites Project Kuiper plans to manufacture and deploy over the next six years.
According to astronomer Jonathan McDowell, who tracks Starlink's constellation, the SpaceX company has 4,863 Starlink satellites in orbit, of which 4,830 are operational.
“We’ve done extensive testing here in our lab and have a high degree of confidence in our satellite design, but there’s no substitute for on-orbit testing,” Badyal said.
The Kuiper System includes three key elements: LEO broadband satellites, customer terminals and a Amazon’s ground-based communications network.
The Protoflight mission will test all three parts, along with the teams and systems that manage them.
Amazon’s first production satellites are on track for launch in the first half of 2024, and the company expects to be in beta testing with early commercial customers by the end of 2024.
“Amazon has not shared much technical information about the satellites, but it appears that it is taking the same vertically integrated approach, based on proprietary technology, to Starlink,” Peter Kibutu, Advanced Technology Lead for Non-Terrestrial Networks at TTP, a 5G satellite consultancy, told Capacity.
Kibutu suggested Amazon’s long term plan should be to build a constellation based on 3GPP 5G non-terrestrial network standards, which he said would help it to benefit from a wider ecosystem of innovation and the ongoing performance enhancements offered by industry best practices.
“This approach also enables integration with terrestrial networks and user terminals, that require conformance with standardised technology. This will enable Amazon to deliver broadband services to the mass-market and cover a wider range of use cases,” Kibutu added.
