Satellites : Amazon veut racheter Globalstar – 02/04

Amazon is in talks to acquire Globalstar, the satellite operator that Apple already relies on for emergency messaging, according to the Financial Times. The deal would give Amazon's Project Kuiper constellation a ready-made orbital foothold of 180 satellites and help it close the yawning gap with SpaceX's Starlink, which already operates more than 10,000 satellites. But the acquisition is complicated by Apple's existing billion-dollar investment in Globalstar, and by the fact that Amazon's own launch capacity is still severely constrained.

Amazon's satellite strategy: buying time and spectrum

Amazon's Project Kuiper is far behind Starlink. The company has deployed only about 200 of the roughly 1,600 satellites it is required to launch within three years under its FCC license, and it has already asked for an extension. The bottleneck is not money—Jeff Bezos has effectively unlimited resources—but launch capacity. Amazon signed contracts with Arianespace, Blue Origin, and ULA, but none of those rockets were ready on schedule. Arianespace launched its first batch of Kuiper satellites in February, with a second batch planned for April, but each launch carries only a few dozen satellites. SpaceX, by contrast, already operates more than 10,000 Starlink satellites and can launch them in bulk on its own reusable rockets. Amazon has even had to sign three launch contracts with Spac