Elon Musk is not the only billionaire who has an obsession with space, rocket ships and satellites. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon (AMZN) -) (and third-richest man alive) has Blue Origin, his answer to SpaceX. He also has Project Kuiper, a similarly low-Earth orbit answer to Musk's Starlink.
Amazon said Friday that it will invest $120 million in the construction of a new satellite processing facility for its Project Kuiper at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
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Construction on the new facility, Amazon said, has already begun. The facility, once complete, will be used to "prepare and integrate" the Kuiper broadband satellites with Blue Origin rockets pre-launch. The satellites will begin production in a separate facility in Kirkland, Washington by the end of 2023; completed satellites will be sent down to the new 100,000-square-foot facility in Florida.
“We have an ambitious plan to begin Project Kuiper’s full-scale production launches and early customer pilots next year, and this new facility will play a critical role in helping us deliver on that timeline,” Steve Metayer, vice president of Kuiper Production Operations, said in a statement. “We are proud to partner with Space Florida to bolster the growing space industry in Florida and elsewhere across the United States."
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The project is set to include 3,200 satellites in low-Earth orbit, and will offer "affordable, high-performance" internet access to "individual households, as well as schools, hospitals, businesses, disaster relief efforts, government agencies, and other organizations operating in places without reliable broadband."
Amazon in 2022 said it had secured 83 launches from several commercial space companies, including Bezos' Blue Origin, to enable the launch of all 3,200 satellites. That number has now fallen to 77.
The tech giant said it plans on launching two prototype satellites "in the coming months," adding that "we expect to begin production launches and early enterprise customer pilots in 2024."
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