Amazon taps SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket to help launch Kuiper satellites
Amazon on Friday said it booked three Falcon 9 launches with Elon Musk's SpaceX to help deploy the ecommerce giant's Project Kuiper satellite network, tapping a rival in the satellite internet business for its multi-billion dollar launch campaign.
Amazon aims to build Kuiper as a constellation of 3,236 satellites in low Earth orbit to beam broadband internet globally and compete with SpaceX's Starlink network, which already has some 5,000 satellites providing nearly global coverage.
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Offering CollegeCourseWebsiteIndian School of BusinessISB Digital TransformationVisitIndian School of BusinessISB Product ManagementVisitIIT DelhiIITD Certificate Programme in Data Science & Machine LearningVisit Amazon, which vowed in 2019 to invest $10 billion into the project, will put an unspecified number of Kuiper satellites on three Falcon 9 rockets from SpaceX beginning in mid-2025, the company said Friday.
The Falcon 9 missions add to 83 rocket launches it had already procured from Jeff Bezos' space company Blue Origin, the Boeing-Lockheed joint venture United Launch Alliance and Europe's Arianespace in a multi-billion dollar launch deal.
Amazon was sued by a shareholder in August for not adequately considering SpaceX as a launch provider when it was selecting most of the 83 other rides to space in late 2021 and 2022. The company said the lawsuit's claims «are completely without merit.»
Cleveland Bakers and Teamsters Pension Fund, a fund that lodged the suit in a Delaware court, said in its complaint the launch contracts were the second-largest capital expenditure in Amazon's history at the time.
Amazon's largest acquisition is its $13.7 billion deal to buy Whole Foods in
