Amazon launched the first 27 satellites for its Kuiper broadband internet constellation into space from Florida on Monday.
The flight marks the start of Jeff Bezos’s delayed deployment of an internet-from-space network to rival Elon Musk’s Starlink.
The satellites are the first of 3,236 that Amazon.com Inc. plans to put into low-Earth orbit for Project Kuiper.
It is a $10 billion move first unveiled in 2019 to beam broadband internet globally for consumers, businesses, and governments—customers that SpaceX has courted for years.
Aboard an Atlas V rocket from the United Launch Alliance (ULA)—a joint effort between Boeing and Lockheed Martin—the 27 satellites blasted off at 7 p.m. EDT from the rocket company’s launch pad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station….