New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS): Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Saturday congratulated Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos and the company's CEO Andy Jassy for successfully launching its first two prototype Kuiper satellites into space to beam affordable internet services in the near future.

Jassy posted on X that the successful launch and the start of Kuiper’s prototype mission bring “lots of learning opportunities ahead as we work to bring affordable satellite broadband to customers across the globe”.

Musk, who is already providing cheaper Internet broadband services in various parts of the world via SpaceX’s Starlink service, replied: “Congrats, this is hard!”

Amazon’s Project Kuiper, its low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband initiative, aims to have a constellation of over 3,200 in low Earth orbit to compete with Musk’s Starlink, which currently has over 4,000 satellites in space to beam affordable Internet. Amazon’s first production satellites are on track for launch in the first half of 2024, and the company expects to be in beta testing with early commercial customers by the end of 2024.

“The launch started a new phase of our ‘Protoflight’ mission, and there’s a long way to go, but it’s an exciting milestone all the same,” said Rajeev Badyal, vice president of technology for Project Kuiper. “I’m tremendously grateful to the Project Kuiper team for their dedication in getting us to this point, and to our partners at United Launch Alliance who helped us deploy our first spacecraft ever into orbit,” Badyal added.

In July, Amazon announced it is building a $120 million facility for its Project Kuiper satellites in the US. The space will be used to prepare and integrate Kuiper satellites with rockets from Bezos’ Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance (ULA) ahead of launches.

Project Kuiper infrastructure includes a constellation of over 3,200 satellites in low Earth orbit, affordable, high-performance customer terminals, and ground networking enabled by Amazon Web Services (AWS).