Amazon's Kuiper Belt

Jeff Bezos' Amazon is trying to build up a belt of satellites around the earth- same as the one surrounding our solar system. And incidentally its name- Kuiper Belt.

What is Kuiper Belt?

Kuiper belt, in our solar system, is a dark region lying beyond Neptune. We have not fully explored it yet. It is filled with icy objects and is said to be the source of comets. There are tens of thousands of Kuiper belt objects or KBO’s in the region, many of them, bigger than our earth in size.

It envelops our Solar System with these KBO's.

Some dwarf planets, even have smaller objects or moons orbiting them.

We have only scratched a surface in understanding The Kuiper Belt.

Bezos's Kuiper Belt

Like the Kuiper belt which engulfs our solar system, Bezos wants to engulf our earth with his satellites. It will launch 3,236 satellite to cover most of the population of earth.

The main objective of this ambitious project is to provide high-speed internet globally. The satellites will cover most of the globe and majority of the population will be able to access internet, wherever they may be. Amazon wants to be the game changer in providing the internet services. More the people are on the internet, more the Amazon would benifit from it. It is an e-commerce site after all. More people on net means more potential customers. Plus the advertisement. You probably don’t know what Blue Origin is all about, as of now. After such a grand-scale project, many would.

Amazon will launch these communication satellites close to the earth, in the low earth orbit. This is not common. Communication satellites, being bulky and heavy, are usually launched to higher heights, Into the geosynchronous orbit.

This is very important for Bezos. Since his childhood, he had this dream of commercializing and promoting space tourism. In 2010, he started his Company Blue Origin for this regard. Since then Blue Origin has tested and analyzed various rockets and possibilities.

This Kuiper project, however, is not a part of The Grand Blue Origin Scheme. It is a project by Amazon. It, however, is an ambitious move and will benefit Bezos to reach his end goal.

The road to success of such a project isn’t as smooth as you’d expect. Elon Musk’s company SpaceX is already working on Starlink project, which has similar motives.

The tussle between the millionaires has always been evident, and with time, it is only escalating.

But Bezos has a thing which his competitors lack. Money.

After all, He is the richest man on the planet, as of now!