At 7:01 p.m. on a clear April evening, an Atlas V rocket thundered skyward from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Onboard, a payload unlike any before it: 27 trapezoidal satellites bound for low Earth orbit. Their mission? To help Amazon build a sprawling new internet network in the sky.
This marks the official launch of a $20 billion endeavor called Project Kuiper, Amazon’s answer to SpaceX’s Starlink. The goal: deliver fast, affordable internet to remote communities worldwide by creating a constellation of over 3,200 satellites orbiting just a few hundred miles above Earth.
But while Amazon’s ambitions aim downward—to reach isolated schools, rural clinics, and disconnected communities—the implications stretch both outward and upward, into the increasingly crowded skies above our heads.
A New Kind of Amazon Delivery
“Billions of people around the world don’t have reliable access to broadband,” Amazon explains. Traditional internet infrastructure, like fiber-optic cables and wireless towers, is expensive to build and difficult to maintain in remote or rugged terrain. Satellite internet can leap over those obstacles—literally.
The Kuiper satellites will orbit between 590 and 630 kilometers (367 to 392 miles) above Earth. At that altitude, they can deliver fast, low-latency connections for video calls, high-definition streaming, and even online gaming. Amazon says its service will support “schools, hospitals, businesses, government agencies, and others operating in places without reliable connectivity.”
The satellites are part of a complex, globe-spanning system: ground antennas, fiber optic lines, and compact customer terminals that plug directly into users’ homes and devices. The company has promised speeds up to 400 megabytes per second for its standard terminal, fast enough to rival many ground-based internet services.
The company is clear about its motivation. “We feel a responsibility to use our success and scale to help bridge the digital divide,” it says. But it’s also clear that Project Kuiper is not a charity. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has called it the company’s “fourth pillar,” after retail, cloud services, and Prime.
That ambition is matched by urgency. Amazon must deploy half of its planned 3,232-satellite fleet by July 2026 to keep its license from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.
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So Amazon is on a race to do as many launches as possible. The company has reserved space on more than 80 rockets from providers including Arianespace, United Launch Alliance (ULA), and even its main rival, SpaceX.
A Crowded Sky
Amazon’s biggest competition is also its biggest warning sign.
SpaceX’s Starlink, launched in 2019, already has more than 7,300 satellites in orbit and over 5 million subscribers. Its network is growing rapidly, with new satellites launched almost weekly. This has transformed low Earth orbit—and not without consequences.
“Every day is unprecedented territory,” Hugh Lewis, a space debris expert at the University of Southampton, told Scientific American. Starlink satellites alone now perform 50,000 automated collision avoidance maneuvers every six months.
Amazon hasn’t announced whether Kuiper satellites will have similar systems. But experts say the cumulative effect of so many satellites from multiple companies—SpaceX, Amazon, OneWeb, China’s Qianfan—could trigger “tens or even hundreds of millions” of close approaches per year. And eventually, a collision may be inevitable.
The 2009 crash between a U.S. Iridium satellite and a defunct Russian one produced thousands of debris fragments, many still in orbit. Each fragment, even as small as a paint chip, travels at speeds high enough to disable spacecraft. Victoria Samson of the Secure World Foundation warns, “It is going to be extremely complicated to operate in low-Earth orbit.”
Then there’s the question of what all these satellites are doing to the sky itself.
Astronomers say their work is being disrupted by satellite trails—bright streaks that appear in telescope images. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, set to scan the night sky in unprecedented detail, could have a third of its images marred by satellite interference.
“I find it horrifying,” says astronomer Samantha Lawler. “All of the downsides are coming to pass, and there’s still no regulation.”
Satellites can even interfere with radio astronomy and alter the visual character of the night sky. The International Astronomical Union recommends that satellites stay dimmer than magnitude 7—below naked-eye visibility. SpaceX has taken some steps to dim its satellites, however the brightness status of the Kuiper satellites remains unknown.
Billionaire Space Race, Episode 2
If Amazon’s rollout has a cloak-and-dagger feel, that’s not an accident.
The company has been strikingly secretive about Project Kuiper. Until recently, it withheld even basic images of the satellites. The livestream of the first operational launch cut off just five minutes in. It took a blurry 40-second video posted days later for the public to get its first glimpse: small trapezoidal satellites drifting free in the blackness of space.
Amazon’s discretion stands in contrast to SpaceX’s high-profile, image-heavy rollouts. But behind the curtain, Kuiper has been moving quickly. A 2023 prototype mission was declared a complete success. The company now has production facilities in Redmond and Kirkland, Washington, capable of building five satellites per day. A processing site at the Kennedy Space Center will handle pre-launch integration.
The man leading this effort, Rajeev Badyal, has a history with SpaceX. He was vice president of satellites there until 2018, when Elon Musk dismissed him for moving too slowly. Within months, he joined Amazon. On a LinkedIn post , Badyal called Kuiper’s first operational deployment “an entirely nominal start” to the mission. “The adrenaline is still high,” he added.
Yet for all its momentum, Kuiper still lags behind Starlink. The 27 satellites launched in April weighed around 1,200 pounds (540 kg) each, heavier than SpaceX’s flat-packed “V2 Mini” Starlink satellites. Amazon uses a more traditional deployment method—staggered separations from a dispenser module—rather than Starlink’s stacked-release technique. It’s more flexible, but also bulkier, meaning fewer satellites per rocket.
What Happens Next?
As Kuiper satellites rise into their orbital slots, they will join a celestial ballet already teetering on the edge of chaos.
And while global broadband access is an undeniably noble goal, it’s clear that space is entering a new era—one in which its stewardship can no longer be an afterthought.
Michelle Hanlon, a space lawyer at the University of Mississippi, puts it bluntly: “We can’t agree on anything in the international community. Eventually, there’s going to be a breaking point.”
There are no global laws limiting the number of satellites a company can launch. There is no international body to oversee orbital traffic. And there is no treaty governing satellite brightness, debris mitigation, or even how much time one satellite can spend dodging another.
For now, Amazon presses forward. Its satellites drift into position above Earth, promising faster internet to those left behind by terrestrial infrastructure.
But the sky above us is no longer empty. And its future, apparently and increasingly, belongs to the few who can afford to fill it.