On Tuesday, Amazon signed on with three companies for up to 83 of its Project Kuiper internet satellites, making it the biggest rocket deal in the commercial space industry's history.
The technology giant signed contracts for 38 launches with the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, as well as 18 launches with European company Arianespace, and 12 launches with Blue Origin, with an option for as many as 15 additional launches with the private venture.
Amazon plans to build a network of 3,236 satellites to provide high-speed internet to anywhere in the world. Amazon has said it will invest more than $10 billion to build its system, which was authorized by the FCC in 2020.
A pair of prototype satellites with a launch scheduled for late this year, will be the first to be tested by Amazon before moving on to launch operational satellites. FCC rules require Amazon to deploy half of its planned satellites within six years, meaning about 1,600 by July 2026.
We still have a lot of work to do, but the team has continued to hit milestone after milestone across every aspect of the satellite system. Dave Limp, Amazon senior vice president of devices and services, said in a statement that the launch agreements reflect the company's incredible commitment and belief in Project Kuiper.
The terms of the contracts were not disclosed.
Amazon purchased nine Atlas V rocket launches for Kuiper last year, and ULA will use its Vulcan rockets for 38 of them. The debut mission of ULA's Vulcan rocket is set for late this year. The base price of a Vulcan launch is not disclosed by ULA.
The Ariane 6 rockets are set to debut later this year. Ariane 6's price structure has not been specified by the European rocket builder, but it has previously said it was targeting a base price tag of $77 million per launch.
Blue Origin will use its New Glenn rockets to fly 12 missions. CNBC has previously reported that New Glenn is expected to debut in 2024 or later, and Blue Origin does not currently have an official target date. An Arianespace estimate two years ago put the Blue Origin rocket at $68 million per launch, but the company has not publicly revealed the price. Blue Origin is a different company from Amazon.
It's not clear what impact competitive bidding and possible bulk order discounts would have on the overall pricing of Amazon's Kuiper launch contracts, which are easily worth billions of dollars. The companies wouldn't comment on the cost.
The most active U.S. rocket company is Musk's SpaceX. Even with Musk promising to launch competitors, Amazon and SpaceX have been at odds with federal regulators over their respective satellite internet networks.
In the race to provide internet from space, SpaceX has established a large lead over Amazon, having launched about 2,000 Starlink satellites so far.
Amazon is betting that it can close that gap. The company says the Kuiper network will leverage Amazon's global logistics and operations footprint, as well as Amazon Web Services.
One of the main obstacles to affordable satellite internet is the antennas that customers need to connect. To make the price of the service accessible, Amazon has produced low-cost devices and services.
Amazon doesn't specify the number of satellites launching on each rocket, and it hasn't given much information about the Kuiper satellites. The company's design is close to being finished, if not finalized already, as Amazon announced it is working with Beyond Gravity to build satellite dispensers to deploy the Kuiper spacecraft.
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