After several delays due to bad weather, Amazon’s Project Kuiper finally launched its first batch of low-orbit broadband satellites on April 28. The company says it is in communication with all 27 new satellites. Amazon used a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket launched from Cape Canaveral.

Amazon is under pressure to get the launches going and has a commitment to the FCC to launch 1,618 satellites by July 2026. That’s half of Project Kuiper’s first satellite fleet of 3,232 satellites. The company has seven more scheduled launches using the Atlas V rocket, 38 launches scheduled for ULA’s larger Vulcan Centaur rocket, and 30 launches scheduled on Arianespace, Blue Origin, and SpaceX.

The company’s name refers to the Kuiper Belt, a region of the solar system that exists beyond the eight major planets. The Kuiper Belt is named after the late Dutch astronomer Gerard Kuiper, one of the fathers of modern planetary science.

Project Kuiper’s stated mission is to provide fast, affordable broadband to communities around the world that are unserved or underserved with broadband. The company says it will offer three sizes of customer terminals that will support three tiers of service at 100 Mbps, 400 Mbps, and 1 gigabit. No prices have been announced yet for the receivers. The industry is waiting to find out what Amazon means by affordable broadband. It will be interesting if Project Kuiper significantly undercuts the prices charged by Starlink.

Project Kuiper is currently part of the Devices and Services division of Amazon that is also the home for devices like the Kindle, Echo, Fire TV, eero, Ring, and others. The company is headquartered in Redwood, Washington, and the satellites are manufactured at nearby Kirkland, Washington. Amazon claims the factory will be able to crank out five new satellites per day.

Launching a satellite fleet isn’t just about satellites, and the company is building earth stations around the world to communicate with the satellites as well as sites that can track the telemetry and keep satellites operating in the right orbits.

The satellites will be parked in a narrow band between 590 and 630 kilometers (367 and 392 miles) above Earth.

It’s going to be interesting to see what a second major LEO satellite provider means for the U.S. broadband market. There is a movement currently underway to divert more of the $42.5 billion in BEAD grants to LEO satellites. It will be interesting to see how much of that might go to untested Project Kuiper.

There have been no announcements when Project Kuiper would begin offering service. Starlink began a beta test service in the U.S. in July 2020 when the company had 595 satellites. Starlink has 1,260 satellites when it began retail broadband service in early 2021.