Amazon’s satellite tv for pc web unit, Project Kuiper, will start mass-producing the satellites later this yr, the corporate stated. Those would be the first of over 3,000 satellites the expertise large plans to launch in low-Earth orbit within the subsequent few years.

“We’ll definitely be beta testing with commercial customers in 2024,” Dave Limp, senior vp of Amazon gadgets, stated at a convention in Washington.

The 2024 deployment goal would maintain Amazon on observe to meet a regulatory mandate to launch half its total Kuiper community of three,236 satellites by 2026. Limp, who oversees Amazon’s shopper gadgets powerhouse, stated the corporate plans to make “three to five” satellites a day to achieve that purpose.

With plans to pump greater than $10 billion into the Kuiper community, Amazon sees its expertise producing thousands and thousands of gadgets from its shopper electronics powerhouse as an edge over rival SpaceX, the Musk-owned area firm whose Starlink community already has roughly 4,000 satellites in area.

Amazon plans to launch a pair of prototype satellites early this yr aboard a brand new rocket from the Boeing-Lockheed three way partnership United Launch Alliance. The 2024 launch, carrying the preliminary manufacturing satellites, is anticipated to be the primary of many extra in a swift deployment marketing campaign utilizing rockets Amazon procured in 2021 and 2022.

The firm on Tuesday additionally revealed a slate of three totally different terminals, or antennas, that may join clients with its Kuiper satellites in orbit.

The “standard customer terminal,” 11-inch sq. antennas, will value the corporate lower than $400 every to supply and supply web speeds of 400 megabits per second for purchasers, Amazon stated in an announcement.

SpaceX’s shopper Starlink terminals, priced at $599 every, in addition to different bespoke terminals for governments and companies, are being utilized by “more than a million customers to date,” Jonathan Hofeller, SpaceX’s head of Starlink enterprise gross sales, stated Monday.

A smaller, square-shaped cellular antenna, measuring 7 inches broad and weighing one pound, can be Amazon’s “most affordable” terminal for the community, although the corporate didn’t disclose the value.

Amazon’s largest, “most capable” antenna mannequin, “designed for enterprise, government and telecommunications applications,” can be 19 by 30 inches in measurement and put out web speeds of as much as 1 gigabit per second – quick sufficient to obtain a high-definition feature-length film in roughly 30 seconds.