Enlarge / United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket climbs away from its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Area Pressure Station, Florida, with Amazon’s first two Kuiper satellites. (credit score: United Launch Alliance)
The primary two prototype satellites for Amazon’s broadband community launched Friday from Florida, the primary in a collection of a minimum of 77 rocket launches the retail large has booked over the following six years to deploy a fleet of greater than 3,200 spacecraft to rival SpaceX’s Starlink system.
These first two satellites for Amazon’s $10 billion Web megaconstellation, known as Venture Kuiper, took off on prime of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Area Pressure Station in Florida at 2:06 pm EDT (18:06 UTC).
On its 99th flight, ULA’s Atlas V rocket fired a Russian-made RD-180 engine and thundered off the launch pad, heading east from the Florida shoreline over the Atlantic Ocean. The kerosene-fueled engine—flying with out assistance from stable rocket boosters on this flight—fired greater than 4 minutes, then a hydrogen-burning engine on the rocket’s Centaur higher stage took over for a 10-minute burn to succeed in a focused 311-mile-high (500-kilometer) orbit.
Learn 26 remaining paragraphs | Feedback
