The American e-commerce juggernaut, diversified in IT services, formalized on Tuesday morning "the signing of agreements with Arianespace, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance (ULA) for the provision of heavy load launch services as part of the Project Kuiper, Amazon's initiative to increase global broadband access through a constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit, at an altitude of approximately 600 km.
“The contracts provide for up to 83 launches over a five-year period, allowing Amazon to deploy the majority of its constellation of 3,236 satellites,” the company said in a statement, claiming “the largest commercial acquisition of launchers ever. Of the history".
ULA won the largest share of contracts, with 38 launches.
This joint venture between the American giants Boeing and Lockheed Martin, which operates from Cape Canaveral in Florida (south-east), will invest to have a second platform on this emblematic site of space history and which will allow "operations at a high rate" for its Vulcan Centaur heavy launcher.
For its part, Blue Origin, which like Amazon was founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, was awarded 37 launches, including 15 as options for its giant New Glenn launcher.
But Blue Origin will also benefit from the ULA part of the contract since it builds the Vulcan Centaur engines.
The only non-American player in these agreements, Arianespace, in charge of marketing European launchers, is entrusted with 18 launches.
They will be carried out by Ariane 6, the new launcher which must carry out its first qualifying launch at the end of the year from Kourou in Guyana.
The contract nearly triples the order book for Ariane 6, which so far stood at 11 shots.
"For the 18 of us, it was the right number, at the same time we wanted something absolutely massive and it is, it is by far the most important contract that we have ever signed, and at the same time we obviously wanted to keep our commitments and keep availability for other customers", explained the executive president of Arianespace, Stéphane Israël, to AFP in Colorado Springs (Colorado, west) on the sidelines of a congress bringing together the major players in the space sector.
Amazon pressed for time
Given the increase in demand for constellation firings and the prospect of additional customers, the question arises of increasing Ariane 6 production rates, currently limited to 11 per year, the president explained to AFP. of Arianegroup, André-Hubert Roussel.
Neither the amount of the contract nor the start of its implementation have been specified by Amazon or Arianespace.
But Mr Israel said he expected "six (shootings) a year over three years".
Each Ariane 6 will carry around 35 Kuiper satellites.
Amazon had already said it was investing "more than $10 billion" in the project.
The magnitude of the announcement is also explained by the fact that Amazon, whose New Glenn launcher has not yet flown, is under pressure from the US telecommunications policeman (FCC).
"The FCC is asking us to have launched half of our constellation by mid-2026, or about 1,600 satellites. That's our goal," the vice-president in charge of the technology component of the Kuiper project at Amazon, Rajeev Badyal.
Kuiper will rely, in addition to the cloud computing service Amazon Web Services (AWS), on "Amazon's experience in producing low-cost devices and services, such as Echo and Kindle, in order to provide an affordable and accessible service for customers," the firm promised.
This project is not the first.
Billionaire Elon Musk, rival of Mr. Bezos and founder of the SpaceX launcher, is in the process of deploying his Starlink network, which claims more than 100,000 subscribers.
The British company OneWeb has already sent some 428 of the 648 satellites planned for its own service.
In addition to the three companies selected on Tuesday, Amazon "is talking to all the other launchers" and could "expand its portfolio" of partners for other launches, assured Mr. Badyal, when asked about the possibility of seeing Amazon call on, if necessary, SpaceX.
© 2022 AFP