We finally know a little more about Amazon’s super-secret satellites

Amazon's Kuiper satellites look nothing like SpaceX's Starlink.

The first production satellites for Amazon's Kuiper broadband network launched earlier this week, but if you tuned in to the mission's official livestream, the truncated coverage had the feel of a spy satellite launch.

This changed with a video Amazon posted on social media Friday, giving space enthusiasts and prospective Kuiper customers their first look at the real satellites. The 40-second clip shows the Kuiper satellites separating from their launch vehicle in the blackness of space following liftoff Monday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Since Amazon unveiled Project Kuiper in 2019, officials at the retail giant have been shy about showing even the most basic imagery of their satellites. Images released by Amazon previously provided glimpses inside the company's satellite factory near Seattle, along with views of the shipping containers Amazon uses to transport spacecraft from Washington their launch base in Florida.

But none of the images showed what the satellites actually looked like. Ars asked Amazon officials multiple times over the last two years if the company would release pictures of the satellites in production, undergoing launch preparations, or even an artist's illustration. The answer was always no, or not at this time.

This policy contrasts with that of SpaceX, which operates the Starlink network in competition with Kuiper. Starlink is the largest constellation of satellites in orbit, with more than 7,300 spacecraft currently in space. OneWeb operates the second-largest satellite fleet, with more than 650 active satellites. Both constellations broadcast Internet signals with global reach using satellites in low-Earth orbit. SpaceX and OneWeb revealed basic information and photos about their satellites before they ever launched into space.

Amazon is far behind SpaceX in the market for consumer broadband service from space. Amazon aims to launch 3,232 Kuiper satellites on more than 80 rockets, primarily United Launch Alliance's (ULA) Atlas V and Vulcan, over the next few years.

An Atlas V rocket provided the ride to orbit for Amazon's first 27 operational Kuiper satellites Monday. The rocket's Centaur upper stage released the satellites at an altitude of 280 miles (450 kilometers) less than an hour after liftoff.

Amazon requested ULA end the official live broadcast of the launch around five minutes into the flight, barely a quarter of the way through the Atlas V's 18-minute climb into orbit. After reaching orbit, the Centaur upper stage released the Kuiper satellites three at a time from a cylindrical carrier module fastened to the forward end of the rocket.

Trapezoids in space

All of these milestones occurred out of public view, a policy of secrecy similar to the launch of a clandestine military spy satellite. Of course, commercial companies like ULA have no obligation to broadcast their launches at all, and there's no requirement for Amazon to show pictures of its satellites.

The video Amazon released Friday of the Kuiper deployments is fuzzy, and the finer details of the satellites are unseen. However, it's clear enough to make out their basic design.

The Kuiper satellites are trapezoidal in shape. With their solar arrays folded up for launch, they look much like OneWeb's satellites, and a lot different than Starlinks, which have a flatter design to stack one on top of another inside SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX has used this architecture since the first Starlink launch in 2019, and it was novel at the time. Once in orbit, SpaceX releases tensioners to passively cast free the Starlink satellites all at once, allowing the stack of more than 20 spacecraft to disperse as they begin their missions.

Amazon's satellites were individually mounted to a dispenser for their ride to orbit Monday. Their deployments were staggered over about 15 minutes, with each satellite relying on its own timed separation mechanism.

What might have been

The employment history of Amazon's head of Project Kuiper, Rajeev Badyal, makes it all the more compelling to compare the two companies' designs. Badyal was SpaceX's vice president of satellites until he was fired by Elon Musk in 2018, reportedly because Musk wanted to move faster with Starlink. Badyal, a veteran of Microsoft, joined Amazon as a vice president of technology a few months later, the year before the official announcement of Project Kuiper.

"Elon thinks we can do the job with cheaper and simpler satellites, sooner," a source told Reuters at the time of Badyal's dismissal. Earlier in 2018, SpaceX launched a pair of prototype cube-shaped Internet satellites for demonstrations in orbit. Then, less than a year after firing Badyal, Musk's company launched the first full stack of Starlink satellites, debuting the now-standard flat-panel design.

In a post Friday on LinkedIn, Badyal wrote the Kuiper satellites have had "an entirely nominal start" to their mission. "We’re just over 72 hours into our first full-scale Kuiper mission, and the adrenaline is still high."

The Starlink and Kuiper constellations use laser inter-satellite links to relay Internet signals from node-to-node across their networks. Starlink broadcasts consumer broadband in Ku-band frequencies, while Kuiper will use Ka-band.

Ultimately, SpaceX's simplified Starlink deployment architecture has fewer parts and eliminates the need for a carrier structure. This allows SpaceX to devote a higher share of the rocket's mass and volume capacity to the Starlink satellites themselves, replacing dead weight with revenue-earning capability. The dispenser architecture used by Amazon is a more conventional design, and gives satellite engineers more flexibility in designing their spacecraft. It also allows satellites to spread out faster in orbit.

Others involved in the broadband megaconstellation rush have copied SpaceX's architecture.

China's Qianfan, or Thousand Sails, satellites have a "standardized and modular" flat-panel design that "meets the needs of stacking multiple satellites with one rocket," according to the company managing the constellation. While Chinese officials haven't released any photos of the satellites, which could eventually number more than 14,000, this sounds a lot like the design of SpaceX's Starlink satellites.

Another piece of information released by United Launch Alliance helps us arrive at an estimate of the mass of each Kuiper satellite. The collection of 27 satellites that launched earlier this week added up to be the heaviest payload ever flown on ULA's Atlas V rocket. ULA said the total payload the Atlas V delivered to orbit was about 34,000 pounds, equivalent to roughly 15.4 metric tons.

It wasn't clear whether this number accounted for the satellite dispenser, which likely weighed somewhere in the range of 1,000 to 2,000 pounds at launch. This would put the mass of each Kuiper satellite somewhere between 1,185 and 1,259 pounds (537 and 571 kilograms).

This is not far off the estimated mass of SpaceX's most recent iteration of Starlink satellites, a version known as V2 Mini Optimized. SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket has launched up to 28 of these flat-packed satellites on a single launch.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post.

Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years.

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of April): 1,811

RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend