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By Joey Roulette
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Amazon.com said on Wednesday it plans to launch the first 27 satellites for its Project Kuiper internet network next week, pinning down a long-awaited start to the company's plan to deploy a massive constellation that will rival Elon Musk's Starlink system.
In a statement, Amazon said it will launch the "Kuiper Atlas 1" mission on April 9 at noon EDT (1600 GMT) from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
An Atlas 5 rocket from the Boeing and Lockheed Martin joint venture, United Launch Alliance, will send the satellites to space, as part of a giant multi-launch deal Amazon signed in 2022.
The mission will kick off Amazon's full-scale deployment of Kuiper, a mesh-like network designed to top 3,000 satellites in low-Earth orbit that will provide high-speed internet globally and rival SpaceX's Starlink.
"We've done extensive testing on the ground to prepare for this first mission, but there are some things you can only learn in flight, and this will be the first time we've flown our final satellite design and the first time we've deployed so many satellites at once," Rajeev Badyal, Amazon's Kuiper vice president, said in a statement.
"No matter how the mission unfolds, this is just the start of our journey, and we have all the pieces in place to learn and adapt as we prepare to launch again and again over the coming years," he added.
Amazon announced Project Kuiper in 2019, with plans to invest $10 billion into the network's development, after hiring a team of engineers who had been leading Musk's Starlink before he fired them the prior year.
Since then, SpaceX has swiftly launched about 8,000 Starlink satellites in space and amassed over five million internet users across 125 countries, upending the global satellite communications market and wooing militaries and intelligence agencies that have sought to use Starlink for secure communications.
Amazon has been slower to start, but sees its dominant web services business and consumer product experience as an edge over SpaceX for attracting Kuiper customers and mass-manufacturing consumer terminals, the pizza box-sized antennas that will communicate with Kuiper satellites overhead.
Amazon in 2022 booked 83 rocket launches from ULA, France's Arianespace and Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' space company, snagging the industry's biggest ever launch deal as it prepared to begin Kuiper deployment. The company launched two prototype satellites in 2023 for tests it called successful.
(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Chris Reese, Paul Simao and Sandra Maler)
