Starlink rival ‘Project Kuiper’ rebrands to Amazon Leo

After respective palmy launches this year, Project Kuiper has its authoritative name: Amazon Leo. It’s a motion to the word Low-Earth Orbit (LEO), which refers to orbits astatine an altitude of 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) oregon less. That’s the portion wherever Amazon’s constellation of 153 satellites orbit. The archetypal codification sanction referred to the Kuiper Belt, an asteroid loop successful the outer star strategy past Neptune. 

Amazon plans to motorboat implicit 80 missions containing immoderate 3,000 spacecraft. Leo has had six launches truthful far, including 3 launches utilizing SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets with a full of 72 satellites connected board. Amazon’s main rival successful this abstraction is SpaceX’s Starlink, which recently launched its 10,000th satellite. 

Amazon is promising Leo volition assistance “extend fast, reliable net to those beyond the scope of existing networks,” overmuch similar Starlink has attempted to implicit the past respective years. Starlink (and Amazon) whitethorn beryllium capable to execute that under the close circumstances, and addressing a deficiency of bully net successful galore areas is an admirable goal. However, launching tens of thousands of satellites into orbit could introduce immoderate large issues, similar an excessive magnitude of debris, accrued hazard of collisions successful orbit, and heightened information for manned missions.