2023-07-22 15:00:00
Amira Shehata wrote on Saturday, July 22, 2023 06:00 PM Amazon company $120 million to build a new facility for its Project Kuiper satellites in Florida, where the company announced it will use the 100,000-square-foot building to prepare its Internet satellites for launches into space.
According to the verge, the building will be located in the Space Florida launch and landing area at the Kennedy Space Center, where NASA once landed space shuttle missions.
In addition to its large footprint, the facility will also contain a 100-foot bay, giving Amazon plenty of room to integrate its satellites with rockets from Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and the United Launch Alliance (ULA).
Steve Metayer, Amazon’s vice president of production operations for Kuiper, told CNBC that he expects to finish construction of the building at the end of next year, with satellite processing to begin in early 2025.
Project Kuiper is part of Amazon’s plan to connect the world to the internet by launching more than 3,200 satellites into Earth orbit.
And while Amazon showed off its customers’ stations earlier this year, it’s still struggling to get two satellite prototypes into space.
Prototypes were supposed to lift off on ULA’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket in May, but a test explosion and other technical difficulties pushed the launch into late 2023.
Despite the delay, Amazon says it will begin production of the satellites at its facility in Kirkland, Washington, by the end of this year, and that it expects to “launch production and launch early customer pilots” in 2024.
“We have an ambitious plan to begin full-scale production launches of the project and pilot customer launches early next year, and this new facility will play an important role in helping us stick to that schedule,” says Metayer.
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