Amazon builds $120 million facility for Kuiper internet satellites

Amazon will pay $120 million to build a facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The company plans to use the building to prepare its Project Kuiper internet satellites for launch.

The facility, which is already under construction, will cover approximately 9,300 square meters and accommodate fifty employees. It is according to Amazon the intention is that the final preparations for the launch can be made in this building. The internet satellites are also connected to the specialized ones here dispensers. The satellites must then be launched into low Earth orbit from the nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station by rockets such as ULA’s Vulcan Centaur or Blue Origin’s New Glenn. Both have yet to make their first flight.

The satellites themselves are manufactured at Amazon’s manufacturing facility in Washington. The intention is that production there will be at full speed by the end of this year. Amazon plans to launch the first two test satellites in the coming months. The first pilots with business customers should start in 2024. The company has postponed the launch several times, mainly due to problems with the rockets. First they had to go into the air at the end of 2022, which later became the beginning of 2023 and now the end of this year.

The company received approval from the FCC in 2020 to launch more than 3,200 satellites to low Earth orbit by 2029. With this, the company wants to compete with other satellite projects, such as SpaceX’s Starlink, to provide broadband internet “to unserved and underserved communities around the world.” While Amazon is just getting started, SpaceX has been offering its internet services commercially for some time.

This is what Amazon’s Project Kuiper facility should look like