Bezos’s Blue Origin announces plans to deploy thousands of satellites in 2027 | Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin on Wednesday announced a plan to put 5,408 satellites into space for a communications network that will serve data centers, governments and businesses, jumping into the satellite constellation market dominated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Deployment of the satellites is planned to begin in the last quarter of 2027, Blue Origin said, adding that the network will be designed to have “data speeds of up to 6 Tbps anywhere in the world.” This speed, made possible by planned optical communications of satellites, is very high by consumer standards and will make the network key to data processing and large-scale government programs. Blue Origin said the network will serve a maximum of about 100,000 customers.
TeraWave’s emergence coincides with the space industry’s rush to build data centers in space that can meet the growing demand for large-scale AI data processing, which requires enormous energy and resources on Earth as adoption of the technology expands.
The planned network adds another satellite constellation under Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, who is in the early stages of deploying Leo, a network formerly called Project Kuiper that includes 3,200 satellites providing internet to consumers and businesses.
Musk’s Starlink network of nearly 10,000 satellites is at the forefront of a global effort to deploy internet infrastructure in space, where swarms of low-orbit satellites offer greater security and faster connection speeds than traditional, unitary satellites farther into space.
While SpaceX CEO said that he plans to establish data centers in space to complement the Starlink network, Bezos predicted that such space-based centers will become widespread in orbit in the next 10 to 20 years.
Starlink, which reports that it has more than 6 million customers in at least 140 countries, targets individual consumers, businesses, governments and US national security institutions with its Starshield version. Amazon Leo, which has 180 satellites in space so far, has a similar customer strategy.
A handful of Chinese companies are rapidly deploying similar satellite networks to keep up with Starlink, which plays a key role in remote communications and geopolitical conflicts. China is developing new reusable rockets that could launch thousands of these satellites at lower costs over the next few years; it’s a playbook first written by Musk’s SpaceX and its reusable Falcon 9 rocket.
Blue Origin’s reusable New Glenn rocket, which has launched twice but has been slow to achieve a fast flight speed, will likely be a vital part of TeraWave’s deployment.
According to Blue Origin’s statement, unlike Starlink, the planned network appears to be closed to individual consumers.
“TeraWave enterprise-grade user and gateway terminals can be rapidly deployed worldwide and interfaced with existing high-capacity infrastructure, providing additional route diversity and strengthening overall network resiliency,” Blue Origin’s statement said, although it remains unclear what type of existing infrastructure the network will be able to work with.
