Amazon has urged the Federal Communications Commission to dismiss SpaceX’s amended plans for its second-generation Starlink constellation.
SpaceX proposed two potential configurations for nearly 30,000 follow-on satellites on August 18, which Amazon said breaks FCC rules that require details of a proposed amendment to be settled before filing such an application.
SpaceX intends to proceed with just one of the options, but Amazon said filing for two also doubles the technical effort that operators face to review interference and orbital debris concerns.
“SpaceX’s novel approach of applying for two mutually exclusive configurations is at odds with both the Commission’s rules and public policy and we urge the Commission to dismiss this amendment,” Mariah Dodson Shuman, Project Kuiper’s corporate counsel for Amazon’s broadband mega constellation venture Project Kuiper, wrote in the FCC letter.
“The Commission’s rules require that SpaceX settle the details of its proposed amendment before filing its application- not after,” she added.
Shuman asked the FCC to “dismiss SpaceX’s Amendment, and invite SpaceX to resubmit its amendment after settling on a single configuration for its Gen2 System.”
Amazon is working on its own Project Kuiper constellation but has not yet launched a satellite. The company is investing at least $10 billion into the project, which is approved to launch more than 3,000 satellites.
Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos is fighting with the government over SpaceX on multiple fronts. His space company Blue Origin is in the midst of a legal battle with NASA over the agency awarding the sole contract for the Human Landing System for the Moon to SpaceX.
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