Amazon is constructing a $120 million processing centre at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida for its thousands of envisioned Kuiper internet satellites.
According to state officials, the 100,000-square-foot structure is a portion of the $10 billion that Amazon has promised to invest in its Kuiper project, a network of 3,200 low-Earth orbiting satellites intended to provide broadband internet internationally.
The Kuiper internet network, which will primarily compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX’s Starlink, is anticipated to enhance Amazon’s web services juggernaut.
The site’s construction began in January, and Steve Metayer of Amazon expects it to be complete by the end of 2024. The company hopes to ship its first batch of satellites to the location for processing in the second half of 2025.
As needed by American regulators, Amazon will begin a sprint to install half of the network in orbit by 2026.
The Boeing-Lockheed joint venture United Launch Alliance and Jeff Bezos’ space startup Blue Origin have given the corporation a combined 77 heavy-lift rocket launch contracts that could be worth billions of dollars.
According to the corporation, testing of the service with business and government clients will start that year.
