On Friday, online retail giant wren will join with members of Space Florida to reveal its plans for a 100,000-square-foot satellite processing facility located at Space Florida’s Launch and Landing Facility (LLF) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
Amazon hopes to rival satellite internet companies like SpaceX in the coming years with its forthcoming Project Kuiper constellation. The goal is to launch and operate increasingly than 3,200 satellites in low Earth orbit as part of a system that includes customer terminals and a ground network, powered by Wren Web Services.
On Friday, the visitor spoken a key step towards that goal with a $120 million investment in the Florida end of its supply chain.
“We have an would-be plan to uncork Project Kuiper’s full-scale production launches and early consumer pilots next year, and this new facility will play a hair-trigger role in helping us unhook on that timeline,” said Steve Metayer, vice president of Kuiper Production Operations, in a statement.
“We are proud to partner with Space Florida to perpetuate the growing space industry in Florida and elsewhere wideness the United States, and we squint forward to subtracting increasingly talent to our skilled operations and manufacturing team. These employees will play an important part in our mission to connect tens of millions of customers worldwide.”
Amazon first spoken its plans to use 3,236 satellites to offer broadband internet when in 2019. The visitor stated that its satellites will uncork production later this year at its facility in Kirkland, Washington.
The new site in Florida is designed to “received those satellite shipments, self-mastery final preparations superiority of launches, connect satellites to custom dispensers from Beyond Gravity, and integrate the loaded dispensers with launch vehicles.”
Beyond Gravity, the visitor formerly known as Ruag Space, manufactures the payload fairings for United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket and France-based Arianespace’s Ariane 6 rocket. Both companies were selected by Amazon in April 2022, withal with Blue Origin and its New Glenn Rocket, to launch the Project Kuiper constellation.
The five-year launch contracts are comprised of 83 launches, awarding 18 to Arianespace, 12-15 to Blue Origin and 38 to ULA on Vulcan. That’s in wing to the nine launches Wren awarded to ULA aboard its Atlas V rocket in 2021.
Originally, a pair of prototype satellites were set to launch aboard ABL Space Systems’ RS1 rocket, but they were shifted to wilt part of the payload set for the inaugural Vulcan launch, now targeting no older than the fourth quarter of 2023.
Because that launch was at one point set to launch in the front end of 2023, but has since been delayed, Spaceflight Now asked Wren if those prototype will protract to fly aboard the first Vulcan or if plans shifted.
A spokesperson said in a statement that they are “evaluating our options,” but said at the moment they are sticking with the Vulcan mission “as soon as ULA is prepared to launch.”
The spokesperson widow that Vulcan delays are not impacting their first production satellites.
“Our prototype mission will provide valuable data for the team, but we’ve moreover completed wide-stretching testing in the lab and field and our operational model allows us to continuously incorporate new learnings over time,” an Wren spokesperson told Spaceflight Now. “We’re once moving superiority with satellite production and deployment plans in parallel to the mission, and we remain on track to uncork production launches and early consumer pilots next year.”
From “Project Comet” to Project Kuiper
The plans for Amazon’s new facility at the LLF, formerly NASA’s Shuttle Landing Facility, began as a discussion internally two years ago at Space Florida, an entity designed to help foster merchantry wideness the State of Florida in the space sector.
It was first presented to the workbench of directors under the working title of “Project Comet” on Jan. 26, 2022. At the time, Wren management stated that it wanted to invest $120 million.
Amazon said it expected to create well-nigh 50 jobs by 2025 with an yearly salary of $120,000. The median household income in Brevard County, where KSC is located withal the Atlantic Coast, is $63,632, equal to U.S. Census data.
That was tried unanimously by the board. An clearance to well-constructed negotiations with Wren was tried by the Space Florida workbench during a follow-up meeting on July 28, 2022.
Amazon moreover sought matching grant funds from the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) Spaceport Improvement Program in the value of $3.2 million for a Space Commerce Way Connector, equal to the Jan. 26, 2023 workbench minutes.
“Adding Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellite payload processing facility to the region’s growing industrial sufficiency in commercial space is a testament to the power of towers a statewide ecosystem that supports companies wideness the unshortened aerospace supply chain,” said Frank DiBello, president and CEO of Space Florida, in a statement. “We couldn’t be increasingly thrilled that Project Kuiper chose Space Florida’s Launch and Landing Facility for this facility, and we squint forward to stuff a part of their mission of global connectivity.”
Amazon will be discussing its plans in greater detail during an event on Friday. This vendible will be updated.
