ULA Launches Protoflight Mission With Atlas V in Support of Amazon’s Project Kuiper

United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket carrying two prototype satellites from Amazon’s satellite broadband initiative in low-Earth orbit, Project Kuiper, took off on Friday from a launch complex at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida as part of the Protoflight mission.

Gary Wentz, vice president of government and commercial programs at ULA, said in a statement published Friday, the launch marks the initial step in supporting Amazon’s initiative to offer broadband service to unserved and underserved communities worldwide.

Amazon said its mission operations center in Redmond, Washington, established its first connection with the prototype satellites, KuiperSat-1 and KuiperSat-2, minutes after launch.

The Protoflight mission sought to bring the two satellites into space to facilitate a series of on-orbit tests to assess the performance of the Kuiper System’s LEO broadband satellites, ground-based communications network and customer terminals.

Amazon will apply lessons learned from the mission to further improve its infrastructure, software and hardware as part of Project Kuiper, which covers the deployment of more than 3,200 satellites into space over the next six years.

Amazon expects the first production satellites to launch during the first half of 2024 and plans to begin beta testing with commercial clients by the end of 2024.

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