After a number of profitable launches this 12 months, Mission Kuiper has its official identify: Amazon Leo. It’s a nod to the time period Low-Earth Orbit (LEO), which refers to orbits at an altitude of 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) or much less. That’s the area the place Amazon’s constellation of 153 satellites orbit. The unique code identify referred to the Kuiper Belt, an asteroid belt within the outer photo voltaic system previous Neptune.
Amazon plans to launch over 80 missions containing some 3,000 spacecraft. Leo has had six launches up to now, together with three launches utilizing SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets with a complete of 72 satellites on board. Amazon’s important rival on this area is SpaceX’s Starlink, which not too long ago launched its 10,000th satellite tv for pc.
Amazon is promising Leo will assist “prolong quick, dependable web to these past the attain of present networks,” very like Starlink has tried to over the previous a number of years. Starlink (and Amazon) could possibly obtain that underneath the precise circumstances, and addressing an absence of fine web in lots of areas is an admirable purpose. Nevertheless, launching tens of hundreds of satellites into orbit might introduce some main points, like an extreme quantity of particles, elevated threat of collisions in orbit, and heightened hazard for manned missions.
