In Space Foundation Address, Amazon Project Kuiper Finds a Way To Ignore 1,538 Elephants

Originally published by Space Intel Report on July 23, 2025. Read the original article here.

LA PLATA, Maryland — Amazon Project Kuiper hosted the Space Foundation Innovate Space Global Economic Summit on July 22 at Amazon’s HQ2 in suburban Washington. But despite being given a keynote speaking slot, it steered well clear of addressing the 1,538 elephants in the room.

That would be the number of satellites that Kuiper must deploy in the next 12 months to meet its first regulatory milestone of fielding half its Gen 1 constellation by July 30, 2026.

Kuiper’s Gen 1 consists of 3,232 satellites. The company has conducted three launches so far, carrying a total of 78 spacecraft.

On July 16 it launched 24 satellites on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the first of three SpaceX Kuiper launches scheduled. Kuiper has large orders for launches with Europe’s new Ariane 6 from Arianespace, United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan and Blue Origin’s future New Glenn rockets.

Given these new rockets’ planned ramp-up schedule and current manifest, it’s not clear how much help they can be to Kuiper before the July 2026 deadline. How much margin SpaceX has in its manifest over the next 12 months is also unclear, but that may be Amazon’s best option.

Is there a Plan B?

Assuming there is one, any downside Amazon might see in disclosing it would be mitigated by giving future customers confidence that the full constellation will be built. Perhaps now more than ever, there is an appetite — in the US government, foreign governments and prospective corporate customers — for an alternative to SpaceX’s Starlink.

France-based Eutelsat, which owns the OneWeb constellation, has been trading on this market sentiment for months, and it has helped bring the company back from the edge, at least for now, with a planned capital raise and reserved rights issue later this year.

The regulatory deadline for the full Kuiper constellation is July 30, 2029.

An official with one potentially large corporate customer for Kuiper said his company had ruled out early commitments to it because of the delays in its launches and the possibility that the constellation would need to be reduced in size. “I hope they make it,” this official said. “But it’s getting difficult to see how.”

These comments were made in March. The situation has not changed.

In his July 22 address to the Space Foundation conference, Amazon Project Kuiper Government Solutions President Rick Freeman said Amazon’s “dedicated satellite processing facility at Kennedy Space Center will allow us to support deployment plans. We have secured 80-plus launches to secure our initial satellite constellation.”

With only 12 months to launch more 1,538 satellites, that’s not a statement that reassures anyone.

Freeman stressed Kuiper’s goal of serving remote areas and underserved rural areas and referred to the approximately 2.6 billion people worldwide “without internet access.”

The company’s website still features the smalll town of Cle Elum, Washington — population 2,037 — where the locals flock to a café to get decent internet that is unavailable at home, and where students pull up to the parking lot for access from their cars to do homework. It looks like a scene from years gone by.

Of course that town now has Starlink.

“We must address the global inequity of information access, break the cycle of digital hegemony by providing equitable access to information,” Freeman said.

Digital hegemony? Many of those included in the 2.6 billion without access are in areas where internet is available but too expensive for them. Starlink has 7,800 satellites in orbit and is offering prices in developing nations that may be matched or beaten by national satellite operators and service providers using government universal-access subsidies, but even that’s not clear.

And Starlink has shown itself capable of slashing its prices dramatically in certain markets.

Is Amazon, a publicly traded company, really prepared to go head to head for local consumer and small-business markets in Africa, Asia and Latin America?

Even governments that have no use for Elon Musk now find themselves inviting Starlink in to meet their promises of digital inclusion. TIM Brasil, fulfilling an obligation to Brazil’s Anatel regulator, recently announced it will use Starlink to connect some 1,300 schools free of charge. Gilat uses Hispasat capacity over Brazil.

TIM Brasil is also a major user of satellite cellular backhaul services provided by Gilat, which is a customer of Brazil’s Star One Satellite operator and Spain’s Hispasat, which operates spacecraft over Brazil.

Assuming Eutelsat gets its planned 1.5-billion-euro ($1.76 billion) capital raise and rights issue closed by the end of the year, it will proceed with deployment of 100 OneWeb Gen 1 replacement satellites, scheduled in 2026, with another 340 Gen 1 replacements — still not contracted — to follow between 2027 and 2030.

Then the 264 OneWeb Gen 2/Iris2 satellites being built with European Commission and Eutelsat financing would be built at the end of the decade.

Telesat Canada’s Lightspeed constellation, devoted to government and vertical markets including maritime and aviation connectivity, is under construction and scheduled for launch starting late next year.

No one underestimates Amazon’s punching power or its patience in developing markets. But patience is no solution to its current issue.

Originally published by Space Intel Report on July 23, 2025. Read the original article here.