We know a little more about Amazon's satellites
105 comments
·May 3, 2025neuroelectron
parsimo2010
They will undoubtedly sell some aspect of Kuiper through AWS. They already have IP addresses and DNS in the AWS product list, and they have all kinds of data transport services.
I don’t know if the government implication is as big as you think, as the US government has been doing secure satellite communications for decades and has already given SpaceX the contract for Starshield. So undoubtedly Kuiper would love a piece of the action but there is already competition and Kuiper is a bit late to the game.
nine_k
> already given SpaceX the contract for Starshield
Many key things the government buys need to have more than one independent source. This way Kuiper may be just in time.
parsimo2010
The federal acquisition regulations have fairly strict rules against acquiring duplicate systems. It totally permits buying systems from multiple vendors, but there are interoperability requirements, and these would have to be interpreted and negotiated. If Kuiper wants to provide services to the government, I’d expect that they would have to be compatible with the Starshield user equipment at a minimum. The military doesn’t want to be lugging around multiple satellite terminals to connect to both the SpaceX and Kuiper versions of Starshield. I doubt the government would go so far as to require SpaceX and Kuiper make their constellations interoperable in space, but even just requiring compatibility with the ground terminals is a pretty big hurdle.
SpaceX has proprietary info in practically all of their comm layers, so interoperability is not easy. The government probably did not buy full rights to the protocols. So the first step to Kuiper getting a piece of the pie is convincing the government that it is worth paying to license SpaceX’s comm standards so Kuiper can use them. That is not an easy task.
There are a dozen hypothetical ways that Kuiper might get a portion of government programs, but the fact is that SpaceX has been embedding themselves into the US government’s space infrastructure for years without competition, and has used that lack of competition to build up a bunch of technical hurdles to purchasing services from other contractors. For the past several years there has been no reason for the government to spend money and effort to prevent these hurdles because there was no other contractor that might be able to offer a similar service. So SpaceX has got a pretty sweet position right now, and Kuiper is going to have to invest heavily before the government changes course.
neuroelectron
I didn't know about Starshield. I thought Starlink was supposed to be neutral.
crop_rotation
Starshield is like a private totally separate Starlink for the US government (and controlled/operated by the US government). I am not sure what sort of neutrality you were expecting as US government is SpaceX's biggest customer and is obviously a critical infra company.
parsimo2010
Starlink is as neutral as government regulations allow (both the US regulations and those of the customer’s country). They just want to make a profit.
Starshield is a separate constellation for the US government and select allies only, and is built and launched by SpaceX.
SEJeff
Starlink is neutral. Starshield is not. Starshield runs on different satellites with potential for custom additional payloads as well.
null
Perceval
Space is an AWS region, just like AWS has terrestrial regions. The AWS space region is named Pigeon.
parsimo2010
Currently “space” as an AWS region is only ground stations communicating with satellites the customer owns, so nothing from AWS is actually in space. But with the way AWS allows customers to configure their network configurations, I expect there will be an option to communicate between AWS data centers using Kuiper for people who have a use case and care enough to pay for it. I expect it to be pretty niche, as most customers are fine with public fiber and Amazon’s own fiber, but I’ll bet they sell it to someone, like a remote AWS Outpost with Kuiper terminal on it for people that work in the field.
null
lxgr
> This enables secure private communication outside of the internet across data centers
How so? I'd imagine the datacenter terminal side downlink to be much more easily tappable than fiberoptics.
There are advantages in latency and potentially availability, but even there I would imagine fiber to win in an adversarial active jamming scenario.
SEJeff
FHSS[1] has made jamming difficult in US military communications for decades. It doesn’t make it impossible but jamming the entire spectrum is nearly impossible at scale for almost everyone. At best it would affect small areas until the US sent rf seeking missiles (HARM are designed for this) at the jammer source. Also note that modern satcom like Starlink uses AESA digital phased array antennas much like a F35’s radar. It’s so much more complex than legacy analog stuff.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency-hopping_spread_spe...
nine_k
> easily tappable
I suppose in any realistic scenario we should assume that the enemy may be listening to all our communication at all times. This is the assumption behind such daily things as WPA3, SSH, TLS.
Jamming is a much more serious concern.
lxgr
Yes, so all in all for satellite vs. fiber in backbone applications, I'd say that it's a wash (or slight win for fiber) when it comes to security, and a definitive win for fiber when it comes to jamming resistance.
In the field it's a completely different story, of course – you can't always pull fiber (although it does appear in unexpected scenarios, such as fiber-operated UAVs or torpedoes).
dboreham
Quick note that post-Snowden: no it doesn't. There's no such thing as "secure private communication" from magic wires.
perihelions
The sibling story has further details,
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/04/a-rocket-launch-monday... ("A rocket launch Monday night may finally jump-start Amazon’s answer to Starlink")
ks2048
Interesting bit towards the end: they need the FCC to extend their “network authorization”. And the FCC is of course now headed by a Musk/Trump ally.
ralfd
I dont expect there to be any problems for an extension. Carr is a market friendly pragmatist and Jeff Bezos is friendly towards Trump.
Musks influence into space seems limited, he couldnt prevent proposed budget cuts to NASA (and NASA is SpaceX biggest customer).
tgsovlerkhgsel
I wonder what "earth observation" opportunities there would be with such megaconstellations, from simply having a camera with a telephoto lens pointed down to a giant, sky-spanning Synthetic Aperture Radar utilizing multiple satellites.
Anything like that would explain the secrecy...
wmf
Apparently you can't hide from Starshield so I'm guessing it's pretty good. https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/11/nro-chief-you-cant-h...
jvanderbot
Probably few. The US has excellent observers and comms sats by the dozens are not very big. It's true you can get some photos but the kind you're thinking of, where you can track vehicles in a meaningful way or something, has to be done by something closer to the hubble telescope (pointed backwards).
tgsovlerkhgsel
Even if it would just deliver 1 or even just 10 meter resolution, I would imagine the high revisit frequency would make it commercially valuable, and potentially also provide some value to military/intelligence groups because it would make it harder to hide activity through careful timing and the data would come with fewer secrecy requirements.
And I have no clue what is doable with SAR, but I'd imagine multiple satellites following each other would enable some interesting features, as it essentially gives you a giant antenna.
jvanderbot
Other companies do this already, and better. E.g. Planet.
bitmasher9
It’s a 450km orbit. Cameras are good, but you’d need quite a bit of mass per satellite to identify anything of interest that isn’t already covered by other satellites. At a certain point photography becomes more a matter of optics (using lens to collect light) than anything else.
Perceval
There are already commercial constellations on orbit doing EO and SAR: Planet Labs, Capella, IceEYE, Umbra, Maxar, and more.
perihelions
The observation cadence could be game-changing. Instead of once-, twice- daily revisit times, in principle you could contemplate continuous observation, of large parts of the Earth, from LEO, with enough downstream bandwidth to make interesting use of all that data.
entropie
Ive seen a video around 2005 about USA spy satellites/drones where they kind of disclosured what was possible at this time. Having a very wide area with realtime object/person tracking and multiple terrabytes of data every minute while beeing able to go back in time with all this features.
This all was like 20 years go. 20. 20!!
Than I see my upper consumer grade canon camera, a r6mkII with 70-200mm lens (mk1, 20 years old) that is able to make a photo of some dog in high speed motion, with a 1/800 shutter with 200mm while its dawn and you are still perfectly able to zoom into the photo and see and identify a midget [1]
SEJeff
They’ve done similar things with hundreds of cell phone cameras and digital techniques to piece it all together.
The prototype was called Gorgon Stare[1] and could surveil an entire city at once.
[1] https://www.sncorp.com/capabilities/wide-area-motion-imagery...
9dev
The video of the satellite release looks really eerie; it’s got something biological to it, like an insect releasing its pods.
ghaff
To a first approximation, no one is going to forgo better Internet for whatever definition of better because they don’t like some billionaire’s politics or behavior.
ks2048
I wonder how competition will play out against StarLink. People just choose which billionaire they like better?
gus_massa
Nah, people will chose on price, reliability, price, speed, price and free gigas.
thrance
The myth of the rational consumer again, of homo economicus.
ceejayoz
Ah, yes. A low barrier to entry market with many competitors, like ISPs, cell phone companies, etc.
Uh oh.
IncreasePosts
Well, there will be at least two, and people will have terrestrial options as well.
nkrisc
> Say a couple perpetually quarrels about who's going to do the dishes. To prevent further squabbles they decide to split the chores on weekly, alternating basis. > > Everything works well, until one of the spouses falls ill. The dishes pile up in the kitchen sink, but the other spouse does not feel responsible for the mess. It’s not their turn. And yes, there's nobody to blame.
And this is where accountability sinks distinguish two different kinds of people: some will (rightfully) realize that it is not their responsibility and no one is to blame, so they will do nothing. Others will see also see that it is not their responsibility and no one is to blame, but they will also see that it will become their problem regardless of responsibility or blame, and so they do something about it.
Unfortunately the latter is often not rewarded or even actively discouraged or punished in corporate settings.
Gud
You are in the wrong comment section, but thanks for the thoughtful comment!
nkrisc
I definitely am.
null
greatgib
The space around us will become such a junkyard with all these big corps competing to put thousands of sats at the same orbit all around us
jvanderbot
These have to de orbit at end of life. Junkyard might be the wrong analogy. More like busy workyard. Or highway.
az09mugen
I just cross the fingers to not witness a Kessler syndrome : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
JumpCrisscross
Kessler cascades as depicted in Gravity aren’t really possible [1]. Instead, a Kessler cascade would proceed linearly, within a tight orbit, and over the course of decades if not centuries. In LEO, the timeline for a Kessler cascade is on the order of natural decay times.
[1] https://aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org/features/understanding-the...
voidfunc
You'll be long dead before it matters.
1oooqooq
burning the ozone layer in every reentry. ah the marvel of offset costs.
perihelions
Satellite constellations account for a negligible 0.01% of human ozone depletion. It's viral misinformation that there's a rallying-cry issue here.
QuiEgo
It's hard to internalize just how big space is. Low Earth Orbit has nearly twice the surface area of Earth. These LEO constellations (Kuiper and Starlink) are trying to put one object the size of a car per each area the size of Rhode Island. We're a long way away from junkyards.
fidotron
And every country as well.
bitmasher9
I doubt we’ll end up with 200+ of these consolations in 100 years. Probably not even 20.
It’s just a physics problem. Rocket launches are expensive from an energy standpoint. These satellites will have a decaying orbit that requires replacement. It won’t look appealing to most net-importers of energy (which is most countries, but the whole EU might bear the cost for one network for strategic reasons).
Not to mention most countries just don’t operate enough military assets outside of their borders to justify their own network. Non-military applications will be just fine with E2E encryption over public channels. More localized military operations can have communication needs served other ways.
eastbound
It’s not big corps. Interns. Student projects. I make software typically used in the space industry and our customers are surprisingly small, just s dozen people each time. Startups, half of them funded by the EU startup funds.
The kilogram in orbit is supposed to go down to $1000, and everyone’s joking that it becomes affordable to send a turd to space “for the lulz”. It’s literally the case.
Ariane 5G is already down to 10k$/kg, Falcon 9 is at 6500k$, pricing on https://www.spacex.com/rideshare/ and you can literally click “Buy” and enter your credit card number.
daymanstep
I see a minimum price of $325k
I don't think a student is going to be able to afford that any time soon
xmcqdpt2
I think it’s cheaper for student groups. If you google “student club sends satellite” you get a bunch of examples,
https://globalnews.ca/news/9818771/university-of-saskatchewa...
https://news.northeastern.edu/2024/09/16/satellite-developme...
https://www.utoronto.ca/news/launch-its-first-satellite-stud...
etc
eastbound
325k$ is for 50kg. Yes it’s the minimum for this program. The students I had were programming the 10cm^3 satellites, I don’t have more details than this cursory explanation but it’s definitely possible.
null
aaron695
[dead]
190eH169ps
[flagged]
croes
So more satellites to block the view for astronomers.
mrshadowgoose
I am entirely convinced that absent LEO comsat constellations, people who espouse this sentiment would likely be whining about "useless astronomy taking money away from helping poor people".
If you genuinely care about the field of astronomy, rest assured that the same falling launch costs that have enabled LEO comsat constellations, will enable the launch of fleets of space-based telescopes.
croes
Space based telescopes have limits Earth bound telescopes don’t have and they are easier to maintain
mrshadowgoose
Yes, I am quite aware that the current generation of space-based telescopes are quite limited. And it's solely due to the historically extreme cost of mass to orbit.
The largest proposed ground observatories already use segmented mirrors. One can use the same approach in space, it's only a matter of launch cost.
timewizard
> fleets of space-based telescopes.
Isn't one of the nice aspects of astronomy is that you can do quite a bit as an amateur with some decent equipment and a nice vantage point? What value does this fleet have to these people?
> people who espouse this sentiment would likely be whining about "useless astronomy taking money away from helping poor people".
You've constructed a strawman for the purposes of gatekeeping; meanwhile, there very much is a reason to have a rational conversation about the trade offs of these large commercial ventures that impact literally the entire planet.
IshKebab
You can still do that.
mrshadowgoose
> Isn't one of the nice aspects of astronomy is that you can do quite a bit as an amateur with some decent equipment and a nice vantage point? What value does this fleet have to these people?
It doesn't, and admittedly I don't really care that much.
I care far far more that remote communities can now have meaningful access to the internet, one of the most transformative and enabling technologies in existence, than niche hobbyists being mildly encumbered. And most people likely fall into the same camp.
As already mentioned, I find it really hard to believe that the common person whining about "the poor amateur astronomers" are being sincere. Some of them likely are, but "finding any reason possible to whine about billionaires" seems to be vogue these days.
tgsovlerkhgsel
Progress tends to have downsides. Highways and rail tracks destroy the environment and make areas hard to cross, but I think most people would acknowledge that on balance, having them them is a good thing.
In this case, the obvious solution would be to provide a small number of orbital observatories to the astronomy community for free or with heavily subsidized pricing.
timewizard
> but I think most people would acknowledge that on balance, having them them is a good thing.
Of course it is. The next question is "is it a good thing to let a single owner completely control access to this resource?"
We've actually decided in the case of highways and rails, that no, it's not. There needs to be reasonable and non-discriminatory access to these resources otherwise the trade is not worthwhile. We actually have laws that are meant to enforce this.
> the obvious solution would be to provide a small number of orbital observatories to the astronomy community for free or with heavily subsidized pricing.
Define the "astronomy community." Do we do first come first served or do we have a priority list? How do we handle disputes? Is it just US citizens or do we need to offer this to the entire world? What if the vendor fails to make good on their concessions? What sort of penalties should surround this system?
There's really nothing "obvious" about this.
thrance
Building a highways is not necessarily "progress". We really ought to stop calling "progress" the destruction of a natural habitat that we will never be able to rebuild, for the construction of a superflous road that will close in 15 years because of poor traffic anyway.
2OEH8eoCRo0
What progress? I gain nothing from this. I have symmetrical cheap reliable fiber to my house.
lxgr
You call that progress? I gain next to nothing from cheap reliable fiber being available at your house either.
93po
this reads really strongly as satire to the point i can't believe it's authentic.
hacker news poster says "my cheap fiber is working just fine, why does anyone need satellite internet", completely ignoring the literally billion people who can't access the internet reliably at all due to infrastructure failures
dboreham
I don't, so there's that.
93po
this is such a weird talking about that basically any real astronomer doesn't really care about, at all. it just comes across as "let's find any way to criticize elon possible" or "let's write clickbait based on a couple of terminally online comments on twitter". satellites are not blocking views, and astronomers are overwhelmingly in support of a healthy space industry, which includes satellite launches. the cutting edge of astronomy relies on satellites, it would be weird to be against them
The article doesn't even mention AWS, which I think is the obvious implication being overlooked here. AWS has Government and defense contracts, with DoD notably. This enables secure private communication outside of the internet across data centers (of which there are a lot) and of course, to any point on the Earth. The idea that this is for "underserved communities" is probably a sly nod to battlefield logistics.