Kuiper seeks limits on Starlink
June 30, 2022
By Chris Forrester
Amazon’s Project Kuiper planned mega-constellation of satellites has written to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) asking that it limits the overall size of rival SpaceX and its Starlink constellation.
Starlink wants almost 30,000 satellites in its constellation while Kuiper’s initial plan is for 3236 craft. Kuiper argues to the FCC that Starlink should be limited.
“Granting a small subset of its nearly 30,000 satellite system would offer SpaceX a path to begin deploying, while also providing the FCC time to carefully address the issues raised by its larger constellation,” Kuiper stated.
The Jeff Bezos-backed Kuiper scheme said more study was needed to prevent orbital overlaps and the risks of interference between the two systems and to allow for the sharing of operational information.
In particular, Kuiper wants more time to study and evaluate Starlink’s 2nd Generation satellites and their impact on interference.