CIOTech Outlook Team | Wednesday, 16 July 2025, 05:11 IST
Amazon is leveraging SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket to launch 24 Project Kuiper satellites, marking a surprising collaboration between rivals in the low Earth orbit internet market. The mission, named “KF-01,” is set for 16 July, weather permitting, with a 27-minute launch window opening at 2:18 a.m. ET from Florida’s Space Coast. The event will be live-streamed on X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk.
Project Kuiper is an Amazon project that was initiated in 2019 to serve the entire globe with internet via satellite. The project requires its launch to navigate more than 3,000 satellites into space with an estimated value of $10 billion. Amazon is speeding up. The company is facing a deadline of July 2026 set by the Federal Communications Commission to have 1,600 satellites in the sky. The 54 satellites that the company had successfully placed in their orbits in two missions earlier this year were through United Launch Alliance rockets. An effective launch of the KF-01 will increase the number of Amazon satellites to 78.
Amazon’s reliance on SpaceX, the dominant player with its Starlink constellation of 8,000 satellites and 5 million customers, underscores the urgency to meet the FCC deadline. Kuiper has secured 83 launches, including three with SpaceX, to deploy its constellation. Bank of America analysts estimate Amazon’s launch costs at $150 million per mission this year, with satellite production costs reaching $1.1 billion by Q4. The full constellation could cost up to $23 billion, excluding consumer terminal expenses.
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The satellite internet market, which is expected to hit a value of 40 billion by 2030 as per the estimates by Boston Consulting Group, is a market where the game is very high stakes. According to analysts, Kuiper can make $7.1 billion in sales by 2030. This one is not limited to Kuiper, as the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is competing with Musk for his own rocket company, Blue Origin. In January, Blue Origin unveiled its New Glenn rocket, designed to rival SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9. Bezos, reflecting on his ventures, predicted last year that Blue Origin “will one day be bigger than Amazon,” which he founded in 1994.
As Amazon chases market share and regulatory milestones, its partnership with SpaceX highlights the complex dynamics of competition and collaboration in the rapidly evolving space industry.
