The US regulator FTC has granted permission to the online retailer Amazon to deploy a satellite constellation. It will include 3,236 satellites. The grouping will be deployed by Jeff Bezos as part of the Project Kuiper project. It will be used to distribute the Internet throughout the planet. Thus, soon the Starlink provider will have a rather powerful competitor.
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Prior approval to roll out the grouping was granted by Amazon in 2020. The FTC has demanded that the online retailer develop a plan to reduce the amount of space debris. This week it was approved by the regulator.
According to the plan, every six months, the FTC will receive reports from Amazon indicating the number of satellites launched and disposed of. If the company has problems with the disposal of satellites, then it will have to inform the FTC about this.
In the satellite Internet market, Amazon will have to compete with Starlink. It is owned by SpaceX, which was founded by Elon Musk. It has already managed to launch more than 3.8 thousand satellites into orbit. Satellite Internet services from Starlink are available in many countries of the world, including Ukraine.
