Amazon says it’s been tougher than anticipated to safe rides for its Amazon Leo broadband web satellites, and now it’s asking the Federal Communications Fee for extra time.
The request for an extension, filed at this time, asks the FCC to provide Amazon till July 30, 2028, to deploy half of its 3,232 satellites in low Earth orbit. The present deadline is July 30, 2026.
Amazon mentioned it’s spent greater than $10 billion on its Leo constellation and has reserved greater than 100 launches to get the satellites of their correct orbits. But it surely acknowledged that it’ll miss the unique deadline, which was set in 2020 when the FCC gave the preliminary go-ahead for what was then generally known as Challenge Kuiper.
“Regardless of a historic reserve of launch capability and deep investments in launch infrastructure, Amazon Leo has confronted a scarcity within the near-term availability of launches,” the corporate mentioned. “This scarcity has been pushed by manufacturing disruptions, the failure and grounding of latest launch automobiles, and limitations in spaceport capability.”
Citing the launch availability hole, Amazon mentioned it has needed to scale back the manufacturing price at its satellite tv for pc manufacturing facility in Kirkland, Wash. “Amazon Leo is able to persistently manufacturing 30 satellites per week — or over 1,500 satellites per 12 months,” the corporate mentioned. “Up to now, Amazon Leo has produced a whole lot of flight-qualified satellites, and will readily have produced a a number of of this quantity however for changes to its manufacturing schedule made in response to the delays in its launch manifest.”
The rocket scarcity wasn’t the one issue behind the schedule delay. Within the submitting, Amazon mentioned a prototype satellite tv for pc check mission that was launched in 2023 “validated Amazon Leo’s basic design however resulted in sudden re-engineering to enhance efficiency and reliability — a crucial effort that delayed full-scale manufacturing by roughly 9 months.”
Amazon has had 180 production-grade satellites launched to this point, on 4 United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rockets and three SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets. The primary heavy-lift launches on ULA’s Vulcan and the European-built Ariane 6 rocket are imagined to be developing within the subsequent few months. Amazon has signed up for 2 dozen launches on Blue Origin’s heavy-lift New Glenn rocket. And in at this time’s submitting, Amazon acknowledged that it’s reserved 10 Falcon 9 rockets along with the three already launched.
By the tip of July, Amazon expects to have 700 satellites in orbit. “By this date, Amazon Leo additionally expects to have its buyer terminals within the fingers of extra enterprise and authorities prospects, and to be poised to roll out service extra broadly within the U.S. and throughout the globe,” Amazon mentioned.
Amazon insisted that it’ll make a closing FCC deadline to have all of its deliberate 3,232 satellites deployed by mid-2029. Within the submitting, the corporate instructed that the company may simply go forward and waive the halfway-point deadline as a substitute for granting an extension.
Though the request for a deadline extension was extensively anticipated, it’s coming at a time when the marketplace for satellite tv for pc web service is heating up. SpaceX’s Starlink community at present dominates that market, with greater than 9,000 satellites launched and greater than 9 million subscribers served. And final week, Blue Origin introduced that it was engaged on an ultra-high-speed satellite tv for pc knowledge community referred to as TeraWave.
In a collection of posts to the X social-media platform, business guide Tim Farrar mentioned the timing of the request “looks as if greater than a coincidence after the Blue Origin TeraWave announcement led to hypothesis a couple of spinoff of Amazon Leo to BO [Blue Origin].”
“It doesn’t appear significantly sensible for Amazon to plan on launching 3,200 of the present design, quite than transferring to a extra superior mannequin that will likely be extra aggressive with Starlink V3. Nevertheless, it’s going to not less than quiet any questions on Amazon Leo’s future for now,” Farrar wrote. “That’s actually necessary when Amazon Leo try exhausting to win buyer commitments within the coming months, particularly after latest layoffs on the firm.”
