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Communications Space The Internet Technology

FCC Approves Amazon's Internet-From-Space Kuiper Constellation of 3,236 Satellites (theverge.com) 61

The Federal Communications Commission has approved Amazon's plans for its ambitious Kuiper constellation, which entails sending 3,236 satellites into orbit to beam internet coverage down to Earth. Amazon claims that Kuiper will "provide broadband services to unserved and underserved consumers, businesses in the United States, and global customers by employing advanced satellite and earth station technologies." The Verge reports: The company plans to send the satellites to three different altitudes, and it claims it needs just 578 satellites in orbit to begin service, according to an FCC document announcing the approval. Amazon has not announced which launch provider it plans to use to fly the satellites into orbit yet. While Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos also owns the rocket company Blue Origin, the launch provider will have to compete to launch the satellites along with other companies.

There are few caveats to Amazon's FCC approval. The company must launch half of the constellation by 2026 to retain its FCC license, and then the remaining satellites by 2029. Amazon also must submit to the FCC a finalized plan for how it will mitigate orbital debris, since the design of its satellites aren't finalized yet. Amazon claims it will take its satellites out of orbit within 355 days, but the FCC argues the company didn't "present specific information concerning some required elements" for its debris plan. A big concern of a constellation of this size is that the influx of satellites will lead to more collisions in space, creating pieces of debris that could threaten other satellites. Amazon claims that Kuiper will "provide broadband services to unserved and underserved consumers, businesses in the United States, and global customers by employing advanced satellite and earth station technologies," according to the FCC's approval document.

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FCC Approves Amazon's Internet-From-Space Kuiper Constellation of 3,236 Satellites

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  • Starlink, now this. Let the LEO satellite wars begin! I know space is big, but *one* slip-up and Kessler starts having a field day.
    • by Marquis de Pattymelt ( 6800258 ) on Friday July 31, 2020 @02:26AM (#60350475)
      Indeed. Letting private companies put up constellations of cheap satellites is the height of madness. Their concern will be whether the constellation is profitable, and orbiting space junk and reduced navigation for everyone else wil simply be an externalized cost that they don't have to pay. Think how careful oil companies are about the ocean and you begin to get the idea.

      Then there's the question of who regulates private property in orbit. Oh, that's right: capitalism.
      • by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        And who's going to stop them? The FCC doesn't have jurisdiction over space, and they could quite easily pay the russians to launch the satellites for them.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          They went to the FCC to get approval for the frequencies. Denying them that would effectively stop the whole project.
          • by guruevi ( 827432 )

            The FCC only cares about the US frequency usage. If they have their entity registered in the Philippines or somewhere else that doesn't care about these things and where you could just hand over a heap of cash to the officials for a piece of paper.

            The Russians really don't care about our frequency usage, if the Russians decide to use it, the FCC will have to clear it and make a footnote about it in their frequency tables.

            • by Rhipf ( 525263 )

              But without US FCC approval they wouldn't be able to sell their services in the US. That is cutting out a rather large chunk of your potential customers.

        • we could shoot them down from international waters?
      • by jbmartin6 ( 1232050 ) on Friday July 31, 2020 @07:49AM (#60350909)
        I saw they had a giant robot space maid who could just vacuum it all up. You just have to be careful it doesn't suck up all the atmosphere.
      • by Miser ( 36591 )

        This. Why do we keep approving polluting the "high skies" / LEO ?

        What goes up, must eventually come down, and someone needs to pay for it.

      • Waste Management will launch 1000 debris scooping satellites that push trash back into re-entry. If you would like your sky clear of unsightly garbage, you'll simply pay a monthly fee.

    • Temporary Kessler (Score:5, Informative)

      by DrYak ( 748999 ) on Friday July 31, 2020 @03:06AM (#60350537) Homepage

      and Kessler starts having a field day.

      At least this type of constellations orbit at a very low altitude (which also helps a bit for ping time, as opposed to geostationary satellites like TV).
      e.g.: according to wikipedia, the latest plans for StarLink is to have *all* of its constellation at ~500 km altitude (not the bulk as before, but all).

      At that low altitude there's enough residual atmosphere drag that dead things deorbit quite quickly (it's part of the reason why ISS is also in LEO, it's a self-cleaning region of space and lowers the risk of debris damage)

      So if Kessler cascade happens, it won't last forever. It's going to be a bummer for us, but we wouldn't have shutdown space access for all future civilisation to come. Merely having some difficulty during the coming decade.

      • Re:Temporary Kessler (Score:5, Informative)

        by Rei ( 128717 ) on Friday July 31, 2020 @04:57AM (#60350667) Homepage

        For anyone who's curious, re: Kuiper:

        4. Application. In its July 4, 2019 application, IBFS File No. SAT-LOA-20190704-00057 (filed Jul. 4, 2019) (Kuiper Application). Kuiper is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amazon.com Services (Amazon).

          Kuiper proposes to deliver high-speed, low-latency broadband services by operating 3,236 satellites in 98 orbital planes at altitudes of 590 km, 610 km, and 630 km. At 590 km, Kuiper plans 28 orbital planes with 28 satellites per plane for a total of 784 satellites. At 610 km, Kuiper plans 42 orbital planes with 36 satellites per plane for a total of 1296 satellites. At 630 km, Kuiper plans 34 orbital planes with 34 satellites per plane for a total of 1156 satellites. Kuiper Application, Legal Narrative at 2-3.

            Kuiper states that its system, which will also include gateway earth stations, customer terminals, “software-defined network” and satellite control functionality, satellite operations centers, telemetry, tracking, and command (TT&C) earth stations, and other technologies, Id. at 5.
          will be capable of providing continuous coverage to customers within approximately 56N and 56S latitude, thereby serving the contiguous United States, Hawaii, U.S. territories, and other world regions. Id. at 2. Given the proposed design of the Kuiper system, service cannot be provided to the majority of Alaska. Id. at 27-28.

        5. According to Kuiper, the system will be deployed in five phases, and service will begin once the first 578 satellites are launched. Id. at 3. “Coverage begins at 56N and 56S latitudes and quickly expands towards the equator as more satellites are launched.” Id.

            Kuiper plans to use the following frequencies: 17.7-18.6 GHz (space-to-Earth), 18.8-20.2 GHz (space-to-Earth), and 27.5-30.0 GHz (Earth-to-space). The 17.7-17.8 GHz (non-U.S. only), 17.8-18.3 GHz, 18.3-18.6 GHz, 18.8-19.3 GHz, 19.7-20.2 GHz, 28.5-28.6 GHz, 28.6-29.1 GHz, and 29.5-30.0 GHz bands will be used for customer links. The 19.3-19.4 GHz, 19.4-19.6 GHz, 19.6-19.7 GHz, 19.7-20.2 GHz, 27.5-28.35 GHz, 28.35-28.5 GHz, 29.1-29.25 GHz, 29.25-29.5, and 29.5-30.0 GHz bands will be used for gateway links. The 19.25-19.3 GHz and 19.3-19.4 GHz bands will be used for TT&C downlinks; and the 27.5-28.05 GHz band for TT&C uplinks (specifically, the 27.5-27.55 GHz, 27.95-28.0 GHz, 28.0-28.05 GHz bands). Kuiper Application, Legal Narrative at 4-5. Kuiper also requests to conduct MSS operations, in addition to FSS, in the 19.7- 20.2 GHz and 29.5-30.0 GHz bands and feeder links for the MSS component in the 19.4-19.6 GHz and 29.1-29.5 GHz bands. Id. at 23-24.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by brunes69 ( 86786 )

        It makes me wonder why the FCC is the only body who seemingly needs to approve constellations like this.

        - First of all, I do not consider space to be the FCC's area of expertise. Their expertise is in communications. Was light pollution considered?

        - Second, why doesn't Amazon have to also get approval from the EU, from China, from Russia... space is a commons. This is not a single satellite that will not affect others.

        • Re:Temporary Kessler (Score:5, Informative)

          by jamesborr ( 876769 ) on Friday July 31, 2020 @08:06AM (#60350947)
          The FCC is in charge of the radio spectrum for the United States, hence, if these satellites were to prove useful for U.S. based broadband, their approval would be required. If Kessler (Bezos) also wants to provide satellite based services for other countries, they will also need approval from Europe, Russia, China, etc...
        • Very true - and actually, the likes of Europe would probably say "huh? you wanna do what?" because Europe, on the whole is very well served by a reasonably competitive broadband market. Not to say we couldn't use services like this in some areas, but I'd guess that 80% of all Europeans can get better broadband at lower cost to this via existing terrestrial services. I get that (say) Africa could use this sort of thing really effectively - but I doubt they're really the target market.

          I suspect other juristic

          • To be clear I am not suggesting that a country should be able to veto something like this because "this isn't useful to me". That's always going to be the case.

            Rather what I am saying is other countries should be able to study and make a determination on if a constallation like this is likely to *impede or hinder their future use of space*.

    • 50 years from now: LEO junkyard. :p
  • Kuiper ? (Score:5, Funny)

    by rossdee ( 243626 ) on Friday July 31, 2020 @02:24AM (#60350471)

    Ping times from the Kuiper Belt are gonna suck..

  • by DrYak ( 748999 ) on Friday July 31, 2020 @03:14AM (#60350555) Homepage

    What we need is multiple providers that are *really different* from each other.

    My main concern is that the current constellations are both by *USAmerican* companies.

    I would like something more like the satellite positioning system, where you have GPS (US), Gallileo (EU), Glonass (RU), Beidu (CN), etc. up in the sky, and receiver that can talk to multiple constellations at the same time on the ground (and some constellations are even clearly designed to complement).
    There is no single entity controlling these systems. If the USA decides to make GPS unavailable (or intentionally drifted) to non military for strategic reasons, your smartphone will simply fail-over to what is still working.

    Instead of *Amazon* launching a constellation, it would be better if EU, China and/or Russia decide to launch similar constellations, so the "space internet network", is a single "country's court order"-away from being completely shut down.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Friday July 31, 2020 @04:41AM (#60350645) Homepage Journal

      We might have to think again about how we manage satellites internationally too. The US is now approving tens of thousands of them in the space of a few years, with little regard for things like light pollution.

      Other nations will be getting in on this soon. The UK is throwing money at it, I expect China will produce some startups in short order, India has an active space programme and would benefit from universal low cost internet access... Those low orbits are going to get very busy and I can't see other countries accepting "sorry we got there first, you can't launch now".

      Another issue is pricing. If say India launched a service they would price it to be affordable to Indians. To give you an idea YouTube Premium is $12/month in the US, around $2/month in Russia and I think closer to $1/month in India.

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by guruevi ( 827432 )

        Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Unfortunately while space is indeed very big near Earth orbit isn't.

        • Unfortunately space might be really big, but we only have a little part of it where we put satellites.

          and in this case, were really screwing up astronomers.

          https://www.popularmechanics.c... [popularmechanics.com]

          Soon no astronomer will be able to look at the sky without some of these satellites getting in the way, and the long exposure times used to look at very distant objects means that you won't have a satellite photobombing you int he corner, but long trails of them all across your shot.

          • It wont kill professional astronomy. The way modern astronomy works is that you take shitloads of pictures, then let a computer filter out 75-90% of the lowest quality ones then combine the remainder.

            Its trivial to identify an image with a satellite trace in it and discard it. What this current satellite spam will do is force everybody to increase the number of pictures taken to get the same number of good pics which sucks for the expensive telescopes but it wont ruin observations.

          • by guruevi ( 827432 )

            On the other hand, it will be very cheap to put a satellite in space or rent them cloud-computing style to take and get even better pictures.

        • Just wait until you're in the way of a hyperspace bypass!

        • Space can't be that big, we have only one moon and I see that thing almost every night. Sometimes even during the day!
    • by Rei ( 128717 )

      The UK government and an Indian conglomerate bought the remains of OneWeb.

  • So what you're saying is that Kuiper will "provide broadband services to unserved and underserved consumers, businesses in the United States, and global customers by employing advanced satellite and earth station technologies,"?

    Not sure I got it the first 2 times.

  • But thinking about Kuiper and Starlink, I wonder how many (billions? of) satellites it would take to reduce the amount of sunlight getting to Earth, and even out "climate change" variability.

    And, yes, I have seen Geostorm, which made me giggle with regards to it's scientific accuracy.

     

  • I live in Europe, and I like to know what authority this FCC has?
    • by djgl ( 6202552 )

      Let's just hope these satellites are geostationary above the US.

    • Fairly simple actually. If the EU authorities don't approve a the same frequencies for use in Europe -- then Europeans will not be approved to use the service (i.e. the satellites will not communicate with any EU based ground stations or receivers). Actually very similar to what will no doubt happen for North Korea, Iran, etc...
  • Strike that...

    It's more of an Anti-Dyson Sphere.

  • by Cmdln Daco ( 1183119 ) on Friday July 31, 2020 @06:31AM (#60350769)

    "Everybody must get connected!"

    There can be no place on the continental US that the spyware in mobile devices can't connect!

  • Now the other 194 countries will do the same I guess.

  • Maybe my brain isn't fully using it's caffeine intake yet, but that seems like a LOT of stuff to be putting up there for one single project. The next time the world gets all, err, sane again, maybe we should look into doing something similar to ISS and start putting larger, co-op platforms over our heads that use a single accepted standard, and people/entities/governments just buy "rack space".
    • Those puppies are in low Earth orbit to reduce the round trip transmission delay to an acceptable level. This mean any single one of them only pops into view every once in a long while. You need multiple satellites so you have at least one in view at any given time to provide uninterrupted service.

      I guess there is some aspect of each one having a limited number of channels when an initial constellation, which is supposed to provide adequate service to the early customers, is a fraction of the number of

  • by Thrakkerzog ( 7580 ) on Friday July 31, 2020 @09:00AM (#60351057)

    Now the Chinese can develop Skynet, an actual giant net which scoops up these satellites!

  • I want to see their plan on how they're going to remove all of them from orbit in 10 years, when they can't upgrade the firmware from the ground to 7G.

    Or are they just planning on leaving them there as a traffic obstruction for everyone going into space?

    • They'll just de-orbit them into your back yard.
    • They are in low earth orbit due to latency issues primarily -- but also, they will de-orbit automatically, if not continually re-boosted (similar to what would happen with ISS and what did happen to Skylab). Ideally, they will de-orbit themselves in a matter of months, but worst case, dead ones will de-orbit in years...

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