WASHINGTON — SpaceX provided a lift for a competitor in the satellite broadband sector with the Falcon 9 launch of spacecraft for Amazon’s Project Kuiper constellation July 16.
A Falcon 9 lifted off at 2:30 a.m. Eastern from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. SpaceX reported the successful deployment of 24 Project Kuiper satellites 65 minutes later.
The launch, designated KF-01 by Amazon, is the first of three Falcon 9 missions for Kuiper satellites. Amazon announced in December 2023 a contract with SpaceX for those launches, saying those additional launches would allow Amazon to “to reduce schedule risk and move faster” in the deployment of the broadband constellation.
The Falcon 9 missions, though, will deploy only about 2% of the overall constellation of more than 3,200 satellites. Amazon will rely on contracts with Arianespace, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance to deploy the rest of the constellation. That includes Atlas 5 launches of Kuiper satellites April 28 and June 23 that each placed 27 satellites into orbit.
Amazon, at the time of the contract announcement, did not elaborate on the decision to procure the three Falcon 9 launches. At the time of the contract award, ULA’s Atlas 5 was the only other vehicle under contract that was in service, with Arianespace’s Ariane 6, Blue Origin’s New Glenn and ULA’s Vulcan Centaur yet to make their first launches.All three vehicles have since successfully launched at least once.
The contract came months after a pension fund sued Amazon’s board of directors, alleging that they “acted in bad faith” when they approved those original launch contracts. The suit emphasized that Blue Origin was founded by Jeff Bezos, who also founded Amazon and was chief executive at the time the contracts were awarded.
Delaware’s Court of Chancery, where the suit was filed, threw out the case in February, with the judge assigned to the case stating that the bad-faith argument is reserved for board directors “who deliberately do essentially nothing.” The Cleveland Bakers and Teamsters Pension Fund, which filed the suit, has since appealed to the Delaware Supreme Court.
Amazon is not the first competitor to SpaceX’s Starlink constellation to turn to that company for launch services. OneWeb used Falcon 9 to help complete its first-generation constellation after losing access to Soyuz rockets when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Telesat signed a contract with SpaceX in 2023 for 14 Falcon 9 launches to deploy its Lightspeed constellation. Globalstar announced July 7 it signed a contract for a second Falcon 9 launch of new satellites being built by MDA Space.
SpaceX’s hospitality towards competitors has its limits, though. During the launch webcast SpaceX said little about the Project Kuiper satellites or the broadband services they will provide. By contrast, the ULA webcast of its launch of the second set of Project Kuiper satellites included a several-minute Amazon promotional video about the system.
The launch of Kuiper satellites is not affecting SpaceX’s deployment of its own Starlink satellites. About four and a half hours before the Project Kuiper launch, another Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, carrying 26 Starlink satellites. SpaceX now has nearly 8,000 Starlink satellites in orbit, compared to Project Kuiper’s 78.