Amazon will invest $120 million to build a satellite assembly plant to be located at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the group announced Friday.
This new equipment should allow the online sales giant to compete with SpaceX and its constellation of Starlink satellites, with its own constellation of more than 3,200 low-orbit satellites, dubbed the “Kuiper project.”
This constellation “will provide fast, low-cost internet access to populations without it around the world,” the group said in its press release.
“We have an ambitious plan to begin full-scale production of the Kuiper Project and conduct first customer trials next year. This plant will be a big part of that,” Kuiper vice president of production operations Steve Metayer said. quoted by the press release.
Placed in low orbit thanks to Blue Origin
The group already has another site in Kirkland, Washington (northwest), where the production will launch at the end of the year.
The satellites will then be transported to Florida for final adjustments before being placed in low orbit using launchers from Blue Origin, also founded by Jeff Bezos, and the United Launch Alliance (ULA).
SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, began deploying its constellation of more than 3,700 Starlink satellites in 2019 and is currently by far the largest player in this market, in which OneWeb, the British operator, is trying to compete.
Several governments also want to join the race for low-orbit constellations, such as China, which wants to have its own GuoWang constellation, expected to have 13,000 satellites.
The European Union wants to launch 170 satellites as part of its Iris project, while the US space development agency, attached to the Defense Ministry, expects between 300 and 500.
Source: BFM TV
