By Bethany Lee and AFP | 2025-05-05

Low-Earth orbit (LEO) is about to get a little more crowded.

Amazon last week launched the first operational mission for Project Kuiper, called Kuiper Atlas 1, joining a fast-growing field in the race to provide high-speed satellite internet to customers across the globe.

This first batch of 27 satellites launched on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Station in Florida on April 28. Amazon deployed them in LEO, where it plans for them to be joined by thousands more by the end of 2029.

Amazon has pledged to align its prices, still undisclosed, with its reputation as a low-cost retailer.

Project Kuiper puts Amazon in competition with other broadband internet satellite constellations like SpaceX's Starlink, which has about 7,000 operational units in LEO and has authorization to deploy more than 40,000.

SpaceX launched the first batch of Starlink satellites in 2019 and serves more than five million customers worldwide. By far, it is the sector's dominant force.

"No matter how the mission unfolds, this is just the start of our journey," Rajeev Badyal, vice president of Project Kuiper and ex-vice president of Starlink, said in a press release. "We have all the pieces in place to learn and adapt as we prepare to launch again and again over the coming years."

Crowded LEO

Satellite constellations like Project Kuiper work by having a large number of LEO devices relatively close to Earth (1,900km or less) that circle the planet and communicate with terminals on the surface.

In contrast with objects farther away, like weather satellites, LEO constellations take advantage of their number, smallness and distance to Earth to deliver information quickly.

LEO happens to be the most crowded region outside the planet, home to satellite swarms like Starlink, Europe's OneWeb and China's Guowang constellation.

Navigation systems like the Global Positioning System, research devices for NASA and a host of rocket parts and leftover debris from broken or defunct satellites and space collisions increase the crowding of this orbital neighborhood.

To prevent LEO collisions and additional debris, Project Kuiper satellites have propulsion systems that will reposition the devices when necessary and send them back into Earth's atmosphere to burn up at the end of their life span.

Amazon already has lined up 83 flights from other rocket providers, with the majority going to ULA and the remaining launches divided primarily between French private company Arianespace and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin.

At the end of 2023, Amazon announced a contract for three flights with SpaceX, after a pension fund sued Amazon, arguing that the company's board of directors "acted in bad faith" by neglecting contracts with SpaceX despite its much lower cost per mission and by favoring instead Bezos' own launch provider.

Amazon plans to offer internet access once it launches the first 578 satellites. Its license with the US Federal Communications Commission requires it to have half of the swarm in orbit by July 2026 and the full 3,236 by July 2029.