Kuiper: Can it still meet its launching deadline?

[Yiosie]

Relevant update:

https://twitter.com/breadfrom/status/1730670308678406468

OMG: Amazon's Project Kuiper secures a 3-launch deal with SpaceX

https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/innovation-at-amazon/amazon-project-kuiper-spacex-launch

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NewsInnovation at Amazon
Amazon secures 3 launches with SpaceX to support Project Kuiper deployment
1 min
December 1, 2023
Written by Amazon Staff

Additional capacity will supplement existing launch contracts to support Project Kuiper’s satellite deployment schedule.

Amazon has signed a contract with SpaceX for three Falcon 9 launches to support deployment plans for Project Kuiper, Amazon’s low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband network. Project Kuiper satellites were designed from the start to accommodate multiple launch providers and vehicles, allowing us to reduce schedule risk and move faster in our mission to connect unserved and underserved communities around the world. Our earlier procurement of 77 heavy-lift rockets from Arianespace, Blue Origin, and United Launch Alliance (ULA) provides enough capacity to launch the majority of our satellite constellation, and the additional launches with SpaceX offer even more capacity to support our deployment schedule.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is a reusable, two-stage launch vehicle designed for the reliable and safe transport of people and payloads into Earth orbit and beyond, and it has completed more than 270 successful launches to date. Project Kuiper has contracted three Falcon 9 launches, and these missions are targeted to lift off beginning in mid-2025.

Project Kuiper recently launched two prototype satellites, and tests from the mission have helped validate our satellite design and network architecture. We are preparing to start satellite manufacturing ahead of a full-scale deployment beginning in the first half of 2024, and we expect to have enough satellites deployed to begin early customer pilots in the second half of 2024.

To learn more about the Protoflight mission and next steps for the program, check out our latest mission updates.

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Saturday will be 6 months since the launch of the first 2 prototype Kuiper satellites. There was much excitement in the news about how well they function and how Amazon was now testing an optical mesh network (how much "meshing" can you do with just 2 nodes?) in space and lots of other smiley face banter. But 6 months later there is no news (did I miss it?) about near term launches of the first batches of production satellites. My original post in this thread hypothesized that there was a path (unlikely but possible) to getting as many as 374 satellites in orbit in 2024.

Prior to placing that record breaking order for launches, Amazon had contracted for the remaining 9 Atlas Vs from ULA. In its most powerful configuration the Atlas V can lift about 15.5 metric tons to LEO. The production Kuiper satellites are rumored to be ~500Kg (are there more accurate numbers available?) which translates to ~31 satellites per launch. Atlas V launch cadence has not exceeded 7 per year but let's say that ULA is motivated to help (to preserve the order for 38 Vulcan launches) and can get all 9 Atlas Vs launched in 2024, each carrying 31 Kuiper satellites. That's 279 Satellites in orbit by the end of 2024. Ariane 6 has quite a backlog of orders but might get one Kuiper launch in 2024 (possibly 40 satellites). Similarly ULA may get a Kuiper Vulcan launch off next year (maybe 55 satellites). I don't believe that New Glenn will have a Kuiper launch until 2025.

So, very optimistically, Kuiper may have as much as 279+40+55=374 satellites in orbit by the end of 2024. That leaves 19 months until the 50% deadline with 1244 satellites left to launch.

ULA has had to use one of the nine remaining Kuiper Atlas boosters to launch the two prototype Kuiper satellites so there are only 8 left for productions launches and none of those launches has been announced (again, did I miss it?). The next 2 Atlas launches are for Starliner and a USSF mission. Getting all 8 Kuiper launches off in the remaining 9 months is just not going to happen - they are notionally scheduled for "2024-2029" in wikipedia. Ariane 6 is in all likelihood not flying this year and even if it did it would almost certainly not be a Kuiper production launch. ULA may get a Vulcan launch off with production satellites but their next two flights are already booked. New Glenn has a NASA flight (ESCAPADE) teed up to be first and it's unlikely to get a second one off in 2024.

Most significant is the lack of any chatter on production satellites. There was an article about what rate production would be and where (https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/07/amazon-is-getting-ready-to-launch-a-lot-of-broadband-satellites/) but that was last July. There were multiple self-congratulatory press releases about how great the prototype sats were performing right after the launch last October. And then...nothing.

Are they actually building production sats? How many per month? When will the launches start and who with?

Crickets...

[trimeta]

Actually, a recent article suggests that Dream Chaser may not be ready in time for Vulcan's Cert-2 mission, considering that ULA really wants to launch it this year. So if Amazon could take advantage of this opportunity to put up some Kuiper satellites, that would be a win-win for both Amazon and ULA.

Of course, that would require that Amazon has at least one payload's worth of satellites they could ship...