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Amazon Taps SpaceX's Falcon 9 Rocket to Help Launch Kuiper Satellites

Amazon said it booked three Falcon 9 company said Friday. The Falcon 9 launch contracts were the second-largest
launches with Elon Musk's SpaceX to help missions add to 83 rocket launches it had capital expenditure in Amazon's history at
deploy the ecommerce giant's Project already procured from Jeff Bezos' space the time. Amazon's largest acquisition is its
Kuiper satellite network, tapping a rival in company Blue Origin, the Boeing-Lockheed $13.7 billion deal to buy Whole Foods in
the satellite internet business for its multi- (BA.N), (LMT.N) joint venture United Launch 2017. Amazon's announcement that it
billion dollar launch campaign. Amazon Alliance and Europe's Arianespace in a added SpaceX rockets to its launch
aims to build Kuiper as a constellation of multi-billion dollar launch deal. Amazon campaign comes just three days before its
3,236 satellites in low Earth orbit to beam was sued by a shareholder in August for deadline to lodge a substantive defense
broadband internet globally and compete not adequately considering SpaceX as a against the shareholder lawsuit, according
with SpaceX's Starlink network, which launch provider when it was selecting most to a court scheduling order. Amazon in
already has some 5,000 satellites providing of the 83 other rides to space in late 2021 September filed a motion to dismiss the
nearly global coverage. Amazon, which and 2022. The company said the lawsuit's lawsuit, saying it would detail its defense in
vowed in 2019 to invest $10 billion into the claims "are completely without merit." a later briefing. On Friday, the same day as
project, will put an unspecified number of Cleveland Bakers and Teamsters Pension Amazon's SpaceX announcement, the
Kuiper satellites on three Falcon 9 rockets Fund, a fund that lodged the suit in a court set a deadline of Dec. 4 for Amazon
from SpaceX beginning in mid-2025, the Delaware court, said in its complaint the to outline its motion to dismiss. SpaceX's
partially reusable Falcon 9 rockets have
been a crucial advantage over rivals in its
rapid deployment of Starlink, a fast-growing
internet network that made the Musk-
owned company the world's largest satellite
operator. Eutelsat's OneWeb, another
satellite internet rival, relied on Russia's
Soyuz rocket for deploying the bulk of its
network. But OneWeb turned to SpaceX
when Russia invaded Ukraine and seized
$50 million worth of the company's
satellites. U.S. regulators require Amazon
to deploy half of the Kuiper network by
2026. The company launched its first two
prototype satellites in orbit in October and
announced successful tests last month.
Amazon expects to deploy enough
satellites for "early customer pilots" in the
second half of 2024. It plans to use United
Launch Alliance's Atlas 5 and the yet-to-
launch Vulcan rocket for the first few
batches of satellites.

66 DECEMBER 2023