Amazon is one of several companies, including France’s Eutelsat and China’s Spacesail, seeking to provide a viable alternative to Starlink’s network, but SpaceX has a substantial head start — and low-Earth orbit is already starting to look pretty cluttered.

Amazon needs to build up a credible contender to Starlink, the satellite-internet provider owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

The first 27 satellites for Amazon's Kuiper broadband internet constellation were launched into space from Florida on Monday, kicking off the long-delayed deployment of an internet-from-space network that will rival SpaceX's Starlink.