Amazon is about to launch many high-speed satellites

Enlarge / Artist's rendering of Amazon's Kuiper Satellite Processing Facility at Kennedy Space Center from NASA. Amazon

In a few years, Amazon hopes to build and launch up to 80 satellites per month to populate the company's Kuiper constellation, a $10 billion network similar to fleets already operated by SpaceX and OneWeb providing internet connectivity around the world.

Within the next six months, Amazon plans to begin production of operational Kuiper satellites at a new 172,000 square foot factory in Kirkland, Washington. On Friday, Amazon and Florida government officials announced that a 100,000 square foot facility under construction at NASA's Kennedy Space Center will serve as a dedicated satellite processing facility for the Kuiper program.

Inside this facility near the former space shuttle landing strip, engineers will mount Kuiper satellites on massive, multi-story orbital deployment mechanisms, then encapsulate the structure inside the nose cones of their rockets. The fully integrated payload bays will then move to launch pads operated by United Launch Alliance and Blue Origin, the space company created by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station a few miles away.

The new structure is being built on land leased by NASA from Space Florida, a state-funded economic development agency that focuses on attracting commercial space ventures to the Sunshine State. It has a tall bay that will be about 100 feet (30 meters) high, large enough to house the payload fairings of ULA and Blue Origin heavy rockets. Amazon says it is investing approximately $120 million in the new facility, which is sized to accommodate up to three simultaneous launch campaigns.

"One of the places that makes this facility so unique and such a great place to do business is the proximity to launch vendors and launch sites," said Brian Huseman, vice president of public policy at Amazon.

Amazon's Kuiper project is one of many "mega-constellations" already in space or about to launch. It's a competitor to SpaceX's Starlink network, which already has more than 4,000 satellites in orbit, and OneWeb's broadband constellation, which has more than 600 spacecraft.

If you follow this industry, you'll know that SpaceX regularly launches its Starlink satellites in big batches aboard the company's own Falcon 9 rocket. These flights from Cape Canaveral and from Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., account for about half of SpaceX's missions over the past two years, with Starlink launches flying about once a week, on average.

Amazon's projected launch rate is almost as ambitious. The company aims to deploy about half of its 3,236 satellites by July 2026, the deadline for maintaining network clearance from the Federal Communications Commission. This would require at least two launches per month, and possibly more, from Amazon's stable of launch service providers.

The planned launch cadence requires a dedicated building to prepare the satellites for launch, Amazon officials said.