Home Society Amazon to launch 3,200 satellites to offer global internet coverage

Amazon to launch 3,200 satellites to offer global internet coverage

The American retail giant Amazon is planning to launch 3,226 satellites into space, with which the company can offer internet connections, Amazon told Geekwire on Thursday.

It concerns three groups of satellites that must be orbit at three different heights. The highest orbit is 630 kilometers above the earth, where 1,156 satellites should reside.

The satellites must eventually deliver internet to an area between the northern and southern latitude of 56 degrees. Roughly, that is the area between the southern border of Sweden and the southernmost point of Chile and Argentina.

Amazon says it wants to focus primarily on markets where internet access is currently limited. It will probably take years before the satellites can actually provide internet connections.

Amazon calls his plan Project Kuiper, a reference to the Dutch astronomer Gerard Kuiper. The Kuiper Belt, a wide belt of billions of objects made of stone and ice behind Neptune, is also named after him.


About the author: Rick Culpepper

Rick Culpepper is of those journalists who dig the topic to the very bottom. He is often late with the delivery of the piece, but always does it perfectly. In his spare time, he collects data for one of the most high-profile investigations of corruption in the EU.

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