Inside a number of years, Amazon hopes to be constructing and launching as much as 80 satellites per thirty days to populate the corporate’s Kuiper constellation, a $10 billion community that’s just like fleets already operated by SpaceX and OneWeb offering Web connectivity world wide.
Within the subsequent six months, Amazon plans to start manufacturing of operational Kuiper satellites at a brand new 172,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Kirkland, Washington. On Friday, officers from Amazon and the Florida authorities introduced {that a} 100,000-square-foot facility beneath building at NASA’s Kennedy House Heart will function a satellite tv for pc processing facility devoted to the Kuiper program.
Inside this facility close to the outdated area shuttle touchdown strip, engineers will mount Kuiper satellites onto enormous orbital deployer mechanisms standing a number of tales tall, then encapsulate the construction contained in the nostril cones of their rockets. The totally built-in payload compartments will then transfer out to launch pads operated by United Launch Alliance and Blue Origin—the area firm established by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos—at Cape Canaveral House Drive Station, a number of miles away.
The brand new construction is being constructed on land leased by NASA to House Florida, a state-funded financial growth company targeted on luring industrial area firms to the Sunshine State. It has a excessive bay that can stand about 100 toes (30 meters) tall, sufficiently big to accommodate the payload fairings of ULA and Blue Origin’s heavy-lift rockets. Amazon says it’s investing about $120 million within the new facility, which is sized to accommodate as much as three simultaneous launch campaigns.
“One of many locations that makes this facility so distinctive and such an amazing place to do enterprise is the proximity to the launch suppliers and to the launch websites,” mentioned Brian Huseman, Amazon’s vp of public coverage.
Amazon’s Venture Kuiper is one in every of a number of massive “mega-constellations” both already in area or nearing launch. It is a competitor to SpaceX’s Starlink community, which already has greater than 4,000 satellites in orbit, and OneWeb’s broadband constellation, numbering greater than 600 spacecraft.
In the event you observe this business, you may know that SpaceX is commonly launching its Starlink satellites in massive batches aboard the corporate’s personal Falcon 9 rocket. These flights from Cape Canaveral and from Vandenberg House Drive Base, California, make up about half of SpaceX’s missions over the past couple of years, with Starlink launches flying about as soon as per week, on common.
Amazon’s projected launch price is sort of as formidable. The corporate goals to deploy about half of its 3,236 satellites by July 2026, a deadline to take care of community authorization from the Federal Communications Fee. That may require not less than two launches per thirty days, and maybe extra, from Amazon’s steady of launch service suppliers.
The anticipated launch cadence requires a devoted constructing to organize the satellites for launch, Amazon officers mentioned.
Final 12 months, Amazon signed the biggest industrial launch contract in historical past, snatching up rides on ULA’s new Vulcan rocket, Blue Origin’s New Glenn, and Arianespace’s Ariane 6 launcher. All advised, Amazon has bought 77 launches: 38 Vulcan launches, plus 9 flights on ULA’s soon-to-retire Atlas V, 18 Ariane 6 rockets, and 12 New Glenn missions, with a contract choice for 15 extra.
That can cowl Kuiper’s launch service wants for its 3,200 satellites. However all these rockets, aside from the Atlas V, are nonetheless in growth. ULA’s Vulcan seems like it’ll fly first of Amazon’s crop of launch autos, most likely adopted by the European-built Ariane 6, after which Blue Origin’s New Glenn.
SpaceX was not a part of the launch contracts, and that wasn’t a shock since Amazon’s Kuiper community will compete with Starlink. However OneWeb, one other satellite tv for pc broadband supplier, inked a take care of SpaceX final 12 months to launch its satellites on Falcon 9 rockets after launches on Russian rockets fell by within the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.