THERESA HITCHENS
WASHINGTON — After a year of delays, Amazon on Oct. 6 launched the first two prototype satellites in its planned Project Kuiper broadband constellation — a network under development by billionaire-owner Jeff Bezos to compete against rival Elon Musk’s Starlink mega-constellation.
The question is: Can Amazon, or any other industry player, actually catch up, as SpaceX continues to expand and strengthen its near-market lock on space-based internet services with nearly 5,000 Starlink satellites already on orbit?
Beyond global civilian internet connectivity, the answer will be of acute importance to the Defense Department as it seeks to broaden its use of commercial space capabilities, especially as some officials and members of Congress increasingly fret about the wisdom of relying too heavily on the infamously mercurial Musk.
While Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall last month said he isn’t concerned about working with SpaceX, which also is a primary supplier of launch services for military satellites, due to DoD’s contracting practices, Musk’s actions over the past year regarding Starlink’s role in the Ukraine war have raised eyebrows elsewhere in Washington. For example, Sen. Jack Reed, R-R.I., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in a Sept. 14 announcement said that the committee is “aggressively probing” Musk’s alleged actions in Ukraine and vowed “to engage” with DoD to ensure US national security interests are protected. (Musk has defended his company’s work in Ukraine.)
One way to do that, of course, would be to find other commercial partners for low-latency, high-volume satellite communications required to do things like stream video and support data-dense military battle management networks —if such an alternative exists.
“That’s the big thing here, and not just for DoD,” said Secure World Foundation’s Brian Weeden. “Can another company overcome the same engineering and technical hurdles to build out a constellation of thousands of satellites that will create competition with Starlink?”
Veteran telecoms industry consultant Tim Farrar agreed, noting that even if other constellations such as Kuiper and OneWeb get up and can provide similar global access to Starlink, it could be hard for new entrants to convince customers to sign up.
“They’re going to be held to a higher standard because Starlink’s already in the market with a global service that offers high bandwidth,” he said.
Project Kuiper: A Long Road Ahead
Amazon intends to loft a total of 3,236 satellites to provide global connectivity, and under its current license with the Federal Communications Commission is on the hook to have half of them on orbit and working by the end of 2026. In an explainer on Amazon’s website, the company said its “first production satellites are on track for launch in the first half of 2024, to be in beta testing with early commercial customers by the end of 2024.”
The Oct. 6 launch included two prototypes, KuiperSat-1 and KuiperSat-2, that will serve as test-beds for the constellation.
“This is Amazon’s first time putting satellites into space, and we’re going to learn an incredible amount regardless of how the mission unfolds,” said Rajeev Badyal, Project Kuiper’s vice president of technology in the explainer.
DoD’s Defense Innovation Unit already is looking at Project Kuiper’s potential to be part of a future “hybrid architecture” that links together government and commercial satellite communications networks, under a contract announced last November. DIU is collaborating with the Space Force, the Space Warfighting Analysis Center (SWAC), and Air Force Research Laboratory on the effort, which is interacting with total of eight companies.
But Farrar argues that “it’s going to be quite a few years before [Project Kuiper] have enough satellites to offer a commercial service,” with connectivity to rival Starlink not likely available until 2026 of 2027.
Enter OneWeb
In terms of p-LEO coverage and broadband capacity, Starlink’s biggest competitor currently on the market is OneWeb, recently acquired by European telecoms giant Eutelsat with a special share remaining in the hands of the British government.
OneWeb’s constellation is operating at about 1,200 kilometers above the Earth, where fewer birds are needed to cover the globe than at the approximately 550 kilometer orbit where Starlink is stationed. And rather than looking to sell directly to consumers like Starlink and Project Kuiper, OneWeb is employing a business-to-business model. It sells service packages to distributors, such as its close partner Airbus, which in turn broker deals with users — with an emphasis in the near-term on governments and militaries.
“OneWeb has managed to do it with hundreds of satellites, but they’re at a different altitude and have a different strategy,” Weeden said.
In particular, OneWeb from the get-go has had an specific interest in sales to the US military, via its US arm, OneWeb Technologies, based in Virginia. “OneWeb Technologies was built from the ground floor up to meet or exceed the US DoD requirements,” Kevin Steen, CEO of OneWeb Technologies, told Breaking Defense On Oct. 13. For example, he said, the company’s terminals employ jam proofing and use open standards to allow military users to pair them with outside satellite providers — thus to avoid vendor lock.
OneWeb now has all 634 satellites needed to provide global access on orbit, Charlie Clark, mobility marketing director, told Breaking Defense in an Oct. 6 interview.
While the satellites are now in place, she explained, OneWeb at the moment has yet to expand connectivity outside of Europe and the United States.
“Today, we have commercial service live from the North Pole down to 35 degrees north, which effectively means we cover the majority of the US, Canada, Alaska, Scandinavia and, and all of mainland Europe and the UK, and then the oceans in between. So, we are rolling out our our coverage and by Q1 Next year, we will have global service availability.”
That footprint does mean, however, that OneWeb now can provide connectivity over the Arctic, which is something US Northern Command has been pushing for. It also could augment or provide an alternate to Starlink for the embattled government in Kyiv as it enters its 21st month of fighting to repel Russia’s invading forces.
OneWeb already is a participant in the Space Force’s five-year indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract vehicle launched in July to enable acquisition of services from commercial operators of constellations in low Earth orbit (called p-LEO networks).
The initial set of contracts involved 16 firms, but a Space Force spokesperson told Breaking Defense on Oct. 3 that since summer three more had been added.
Building A Diverse Supplier Base
However, SpaceX for the moment is the only one of those firms to have one an actual tasking order for services from the US military, the Space Force spokesperson said. Bloomberg first reported the Sept. 1 contract, worth $70 million, for services to be provided by SpaceX’s military-oriented twin to Starlink called Starshield. It represents Starshield’s first (public anyway) contract.
The Space Force spokesperson stressed that the service does intend to issue more tasking orders under the contracting vehicle that would likely go to other firms.
“The Commercial Satellite Communications Office (CSCO), as a part of the Commercial Space Office, has received great demand for service under the pLEO IDIQ from services and Combatant Commands. CSCO is gathering requirements and is responsive to customers and will be executing numerous task orders under the pLEO IDIQ,” the spokesperson said.
Farrar, however, noted that the big question will be what more funding actually is available. But despite all the challenges facing potential SpaceX broadband rivals, he said the emergence of new providers is good for DoD and other government customers.
The US government “is going to have an increasing set of choices over time. It’s going to be able to use OneWeb over the next year, and Amazon, at some point within four or five years. That’s very helpful in terms of disciplining Starlink in terms of their demands,” he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment