Gregory Falco

Assistant professor in Cornell Engineering

Gregory Falco, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, studies space supremacy and cybersecurity. He is the director of the Aerospace ADVERSARY Laboratory, which designs and develops next-generation autonomous, secure and resilient space infrastructure.

Falco says:

“Kuiper's successful launch ushers in a new age for competitive mega constellations where SpaceX is no longer the only commercial U.S. player in the market for broadband services. Amazon has expertise selling to both the government, defense industrial base and commercial players so we expect this to be an important punctuation mark in this space economy. 

“With the proliferation of mega constellations there are many risks that range from concerns with space traffic management, space domain awareness, cyber security, and space debris. Players like Amazon and SpaceX are not necessarily solving any of these challenges but exacerbating existing ones given the exponential scale of assets in orbit that we expect in the coming years. Advancements for society from a convenience and technical capability standpoint never reduces risk. In this case I think that the benefits of a more heterogeneous space economy outweigh the risks.” 

Donny Persaud

Researcher

Donny Persaud, a researcher and sociologist of technology, analyzes how new internet infrastructures like satellite constellations are changing the ways we think about outer space, rurality, and the future of internet connectivity.

Persaud says:

“The launch of Amazon’s Kuiper satellite internet constellation will likely lead to changes in the economic landscape of rural internet solutions. Kuiper is looking to capture a similar market to Starlink so consumers should expect satellite internet pricing to be more competitive with the introduction of a new provider. Though Kuiper’s deployment is behind Starlink’s, Amazon will be able to leverage their existing cloud computing and consumer product experience, providing them with a significant advantage to close this gap.

“Notably, Kuiper’s proposed constellation of 3,236 satellites is significantly smaller than Starlink’s proposed 30,000. This may lead to worries about the capacity of their network to provide broadband Internet services to a growing customer base. Starlink currently uses congestion charging and waitlists while SpaceX continues to expand the network’s capacity with more satellites. It will be interesting to see how Kuiper approaches this issue as bandwidth limitations and additional fees may put prospective users off the service.”