Amazon announced it plans to speculate $120 million to construct a satellite processing facility at Space Florida’s Launch and Landing Facility at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The Starlink competitor will construct a 100,000-square-foot facility next to the previous Space Shuttle landing strip, which was taken over by Space Florida in 2013.
The Kuiper satellites might be built at their Kirkland, Washington facility before being shipped right down to the processing facility in Florida. Once the satellites arrive in Florida, they might be readied for flight, attached to the separation system built by Beyond Gravity (formerly RUAG Space), after which encapsulated into the fairings of an Atlas V, Vulcan Centaur, and the Recent Glenn rockets.
The power is anticipated to be fully operational by 2025 and capable of support up to 3 simultaneous launch campaigns a month. The clean room for this processing might be 100 feet tall, with loads of room to spare for the large 72-foot-tall Recent Glenn fairing.
Amazon has already secured quite a few launch contracts for his or her constellation, including 38 on Vulcan Centaur, 18 on Ariane 6, 12 on Recent Glenn, and 9 on Atlas V. The primary 2 test satellites are scheduled to launch on Vulcan Centaur.
Nevertheless, with that rocket indefinitely delayed while they make structural changes to Centaur V upper stage, Amazon could switch the demonstration launch to an already purchased Atlas V, which is the one operational rocket currently contracted to launch the satellites.
Earlier this 12 months, Amazon revealed their user terminals for Kuiper with 4 options starting from 100 megabits per second to 1 gigabit per second with prices between $100 and $400 for the terminals, nonetheless, the fastest option didn’t have a price disclosed.
Amazon’s constellation is currently planned to be around 3,200+ satellites.