Blue Origin to take on Starlink with ultra-high-speed satellite network TeraWave

Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin Enterprises LP today announced plans to launch a new, ultra-high-speed satellite constellation network called TeraWave, which will provide additional competition to Elon Musk’s Starlink.

With data speeds of up to 6 terabits per second, it’ll be much faster than any existing satellite-based Wi-Fi network, making it ideal for enterprises, data center operators and government customers.

Blue Origin said in an announcement that TeraWave’s initial constellation will consist of 5,280 satellites in low-Earth orbit and 128 more in medium-Earth orbit, with the first ones set to be deployed in late 2027. The company didn’t say how long it will take to get the entire fleet of satellites into orbit.

The bulk of the satellites in lower orbit will use radio frequency or RF connectivity and support a maximum data transfer rate of 144 gigabits per second, while the 128 destined for medium-Earth orbit will be able to reach much higher speeds of 6 Tbps. Both will be much faster than SpaceX Corp.’s Starlink, which currently offers a maximum speed of 400 megabits per second. Musk has said he intends to launch upgraded Starlink satellites in future that will enable the service to support data transfer rates of up to 1 Gbps.

On its official website, TeraWave states that it’s adding a “space-based layer to your existing network infrastructure, providing connectivity to locations unreachable by traditional methods.”

The launch of TeraWave has raised a few eyebrows, because Bezos already operates one satellite constellation, known as Amazon Leo, previously called “Project Kuiper.” Bezos has said that Leo will ultimately consist of 3,000 satellites in low-Earth orbit, but it’s primarily focused on consumers and businesses that can get away with more standard network speeds.

Together, the two services will be able to provide much stiffer competition to Starlink, which dominates the satellite internet provider market, with more than 9 million customers globally. However, TeraWave and Leo will operate as distinct networks, Blue Origin said. “We identified an unmet need with customers who were seeking enterprise-grade internet access with higher speeds, symmetrical upload/download speeds, more redundancy, and rapid scalability for their networks. TeraWave solves these problems,” the company explained in a statement.

Blue Origin is best known as a space tourism company, offering short trips into low-Earth orbit aboard its small New Shepard rocket, but has ambitions to become a much bigger player in the spaceflight industry. In addition to Leo and TeraWave, it’s also developing a much larger rocket called New Glenn, which conducted its first successful launch just over a year ago.

On its second launch a few months later, it landed New Glenn’s booster stage, repeating Starlink’s feat of creating a reusable rocket system to reduce the costs associated with lifting cargo into space. Ultimately, Blue Origin hopes to serve the National Aeronautics and Space Administration just as SpaceX already does, sending cargo and astronauts into space.

New Glenn is scheduled to make a third launch later this year, aiming to send a robotic lander to the surface of the Moon to demonstrate its commercial viability.

Image: Blue Origin