{"id":6824,"date":"2025-04-10T05:21:09","date_gmt":"2025-04-10T05:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/6824\/"},"modified":"2025-04-10T05:21:09","modified_gmt":"2025-04-10T05:21:09","slug":"elon-musks-starlink-sees-its-first-major-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/6824\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk’s Starlink sees its first major challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\t\t\t\tAmazon hires team of engineers who had worked at Starlink, but were sacked by Musk, to help develop rival project\t\t\t\t\t <\/p>\n

Amazon is poised to launch its first satellites into space to provide global broadband internet in the tech giant\u2019s quest to build a substantial constellation of spacecraft to challenge Elon Musk\u2019s Starlink<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The first 27 satellites for the Jeff Bezos\u2019s<\/a> Project Kuiper internet network had planned to launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida on Wednesday from an Atlas 5 rocket.<\/p>\n

However the launch was postponed over bad weather, the launch provider United Launch Alliance said.<\/p>\n

The tech giant aims to have a network of more than 3,200 satellites in space, designed to deliver internet access worldwide, including to remote and underserved regions such as conflict zones and areas affected by natural disasters.<\/p>\n

The $10bn (\u00a37.8bn) project is expected to take several years to complete but Amazon aims to branch into the UK internet market after Project Kuiper was approved by regulator Ofcom<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"CAPEA United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying the first two demonstration satellites for Amazon\u2019s Project Kuiper broadband internet constellation lifts off from Cape Canaveral (Photo: Paul Hennesy\/Anadolu Agency)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important symbolically to show Amazon has a foot in the game now with satellites in orbit,\u201d said Tim Hatt, Head of Research and Consulting at GSMA Intelligence. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt shows a more broad-based competition across the satellite space now that you have many companies operating in low-Earth orbit.\u201d <\/p>\n

Hiring ex-Starlink employees to launch satellite rival <\/p>\n

The satellites prepared for launch represent a significant upgrade from the two prototype satellites that were successfully tested in October 2023, Amazon has said.<\/p>\n

To develop the project, the Bezos-led company hired a team of engineers who had previously worked at Starlink but were dismissed by Musk for allegedly violating company policies.<\/p>\n

Amazon started developing its project in 2019 \u2013 a year after Starlink\u2019s first launch \u2013 but it sees its web services as having a competitive edge over SpaceX with mass-produced \u201cconsumer terminals\u201d. <\/p>\n

\"ThisAn Atlas 5 rocket at Amazon\u2019s satellite processing facility in Cape Canaveral, Florida, in March 2025 (Photo: Amazon\/AFP)<\/p>\n

These pizza box-sized antennas that will communicate with Kuiper satellites overhead are intended to cost less than $500 to build, the company has claimed.<\/p>\n

SpaceX has already launched more than 7,000 Starlink satellites in space, serving over five million internet users across 125 countries, including providing services for militaries and intelligence agencies. <\/p>\n

Notably, Starlink has become essential for communications in war-torn Ukraine<\/a>, where hospitals and the military rely on it to operate.<\/p>\n

Project Kuiper also intends to tap into this market with \u201chigh-speed, low-latency internet to virtually any location on the planet\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"AThe Atlas stands on the pad with a payload of Amazon\u2019s Project Kuiper satellites (Photo: Steve Nesius\/Reuters) <\/p>\n

Once deployed in space, the satellites will travel at speeds exceeding 17,000 miles per hour (27,359 km\/h) in an orbit 392 miles (630 km) above Earth, completing a full orbit approximately every 90 minutes, according to Amazon. <\/p>\n

Could this improve your mobile phone service?<\/p>\n

Mobile operators have been partnered with satellite network companies \u201cas a way to extend the reach of their own networks,\u201d said Hatt. <\/p>\n

\u201cGround-based coverage can only get so far before the economics become very challenging to reach 100 per cent coverage,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo satellite is seen as a pragmatic way to extend that and kind of have a pragmatic complement where the customers of the mobile operators are able to get better and extended connectivity, and both the operators and satellite partners are able to participate in the monetisation.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"ThisA Starlink terminal pictured in Ukraine (Photo: AFP\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

These partnerships between mobile phone and satellite providers are especially valuable in coordinating emergency responses following natural disasters, such as hurricanes and earthquakes, when ground-based infrastructure may be down. <\/p>\n

Ending the SpaceX monopoly<\/p>\n

The satellite industry has seen \u201ca huge growth in the range of players and the capacity in orbit since Starlink initially filed and then launched the first of its satellites,\u201d Hatt said. <\/p>\n

Significant growth has been observed particularly in the capacity of Low Earth Orbits (LEO), the closest of the three main orbital planes where satellites operate, including those of SpaceX and Kuiper.<\/p>\n

\"FILEThe launch of Starlink V2 mini-satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base seen over the Pacific Ocean from Encinitas, California (Photo: Mike Blake\/Reuters)<\/p>\n

SpaceX\u2019s Starlink is the dominant force in the field, but it is far from being the only player. <\/p>\n

Besides Amazon\u2019s Kuiper, China also plans to launch 13,000 satellites as part of its GuoWang constellation. <\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s Telesat is reportedly expected to add 300 and the German start-up Rivada 600 satellites. <\/p>\n

The European Union\u2019s Iris project has 170 satellites, while the US military\u2019s Space Development Agency plans to launch 300-500 more. <\/p>\n

\"ThisProject Kuiper\u2019s satellites in an Atlas V rocket fairing at an Amazon facility in Cape Canavera (Photo: Amazon\/AFP)<\/p>\n

Satellite networks are increasingly becoming \u201ca strategically important asset as part of a vertically integrated business model,\u201d Hatt said. \u201cBoth Starlink and Amazon have that and I think we\u2019re going to see that play out over the coming years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Low orbit constellation satellites are a very new technology, noted Joanna Darlington, executive committee member of the satellite telecommunications company Eutelsat Group.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, it\u2019s only been going for three years. So we\u2019re really at the very beginning of that. And I expect what you will see is more sophisticated technology being embarked on those satellites.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amazon hires team of engineers who had worked at Starlink, but were sacked by Musk, to help develop…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6825,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3844],"tags":[295,70,413,3435,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-6824","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-elon-musk","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-space","11":"tag-starlink","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114311994822088669","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}