{"id":31078,"date":"2026-05-29T01:26:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T01:26:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/29\/amazon-turns-to-jeff-bezos-other-company-to-do-some-heavy-lifting\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T01:26:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T01:26:16","slug":"amazon-turns-to-jeff-bezos-other-company-to-do-some-heavy-lifting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/29\/amazon-turns-to-jeff-bezos-other-company-to-do-some-heavy-lifting\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon turns to Jeff Bezos’ other company to do some heavy lifting"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Meanwhile, in French Guiana, Europe\u2019s Ariane 6 rocket has launched two dedicated missions for Amazon Leo, each with 32 satellites. Amazon has shipped the next batch of satellites to French Guiana for the next Ariane 6 launch, which will debut an upgrade for higher payload capacity.<\/p>\n

Amazon originally bought launches on every available large Western rocket except SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9. The only rocket in Amazon\u2019s stable of launchers with any flight history was ULA\u2019s Atlas V, with a finite number of remaining launches due to its impending retirement. Delays with Vulcan, Ariane 6, and New Glenn were initially of little concern to Amazon, which was contending with its own issues scaling production of satellites in a factory in Kirkland, Washington. The situation changed last year, when Amazon\u2019s satellite production outpaced the availability of rockets to put them into space.<\/p>\n

Amazon retreated from the \u201ceveryone but SpaceX\u201d strategy in 2023 after a shareholder lawsuit accused founder Jeff Bezos and the board of directors of breaching their \u201cfiduciary duty\u201d by not considering SpaceX as an option for launching Amazon Leo satellites. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit alleged Amazon didn\u2019t consider the Falcon 9 due to an intense and personal rivalry between Bezos and SpaceX founder Elon Musk.<\/p>\n

Amazon bowed to the allegations and\u00a0announced a contract with SpaceX<\/a> for three Falcon 9 launches, all of which flew last year. Amazon has scooped up 10 more Falcon 9 flights since then, but none have flown yet.<\/p>\n

With Blue Origin\u2019s New Glenn soon to fly its first mission for Amazon, Arianespace\u2019s Ariane 6 on stable footing, and the prospect of more Falcon 9 launches on the horizon, Amazon may have turned a corner in solving its rocket conundrum.<\/p>\n

If it has, a well-funded competitor to SpaceX\u2019s Starlink service, long dominant in the satellite broadband market, may finally be at hand. Still, Starlink has the advantage of launching satellites cheaply and reliably on Falcon 9. SpaceX\u2019s internal costs for a Falcon 9 launch are thought to be close to $15 million, one-fifth of the $74 million SpaceX charges external customers like Amazon for a dedicated flight.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


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Meanwhile, in French Guiana, Europe\u2019s Ariane 6 rocket has launched two dedicated missions for Amazon Leo, each with 32 satellites.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31079,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_animmysite_disable_animation":false,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/HJVyIu2WoAEFclh-1152x648-1779990562.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[212],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}