E-commerce giant %Amazon ($AMZN) plans to launch more than 3,000 satellites into space that will help facilitate internet connections back on earth.
The internet-from-space initiative, dubbed %ProjectKuiper at Amazon, is being developed in partnership with %BlueOrigin, the privately held space company run by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
The satellite launches are set to take place over a five-year period and will allow Amazon to launch the bulk of its planned constellation of 3,236 satellites into space. Amazon has said it is investing billions of dollars in the internet project.
Amazon aims to create a massive array of satellites in low Earth orbit that are designed to provide low-latency broadband internet service to all parts of the world.
The concept is similar to SpaceX’s %Starlink program, a planned constellation of tens of thousands of satellites also designed to provide broadband internet from low Earth orbit.
So far, SpaceX has launched more than 2,000 satellites into orbit and has begun limited service around the world, with 250,000 subscribers tapped into the system so far. Amazon’s Project Kuiper has yet to launch any of its satellites into space.
However, Amazon is hoping to change that with its first satellite launch later this year. Amazon first needs to launch its satellite prototypes. After that, the company will tweak the design of its final satellites before launching them in batches into orbit.