<p>Amazon is building a $120 million processing facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida for its thousands of planned Kuiper internet satellites, the company and state officials said Friday.</p>.<p>The 100,000-square-foot building is part of the roughly $10 billion that Amazon has vowed to invest in its Kuiper project, a planned network of 3,200 low Earth-orbiting satellites designed to beam broadband internet globally.</p>.<p>The Kuiper internet network, which will largely compete with Starlink from Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is expected to complement Amazon’s web services powerhouse.</p>.<p><strong>Also Read | <a href="https://www.deccanherald.com/business/technology/amazon-india-records-biggest-prime-day-sale-event-1239003.html">Amazon India records biggest Prime Day sale event</a></strong></p>.<p>The Florida facility will employ 50 staff and be a last stop for Amazon's Kuiper satellites before they go to space after being manufactured at the Kuiper project's primary plant in Redmond, Washington. A ten-story-tall room will allow the satellites to be fitted into rocket payload fairings, the protective shell around satellites that sit atop the rocket.</p>.<p>Amazon began construction of the site in January and plans to complete it by late 2024, with a target to ship its first batch of satellites to the area for processing in the second half of 2025, said Steve Metayer, Amazon's vice president of Kuiper Production Operations.</p>.<p>That target date will kickoff a sprint for Amazon to deploy half of the network into orbit by 2026, as required by US regulators.</p>.<p>The company has bagged 77 heavy-lift rocket launch contracts, potentially worth billions of dollars combined, mostly from the Boeing-Lockheed joint venture United Launch Alliance and Jeff Bezos's space company Blue Origin.</p>.<p>Amazon plans to launch its first few prototype satellites to space by the end of the year, followed by launches of its first mass-produced satellites in 2024.</p>.<p>Testing the service with corporate and government customers will begin that year, the company said.</p>.<p>Anna Farrar, a spokeswoman for Space Florida, a state-funded entity to attract space businesses to Florida, said Amazon is eligible to receive funds under a state grant for transportation-related projects but "has not received any funding to date."</p>
<p>Amazon is building a $120 million processing facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida for its thousands of planned Kuiper internet satellites, the company and state officials said Friday.</p>.<p>The 100,000-square-foot building is part of the roughly $10 billion that Amazon has vowed to invest in its Kuiper project, a planned network of 3,200 low Earth-orbiting satellites designed to beam broadband internet globally.</p>.<p>The Kuiper internet network, which will largely compete with Starlink from Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is expected to complement Amazon’s web services powerhouse.</p>.<p><strong>Also Read | <a href="https://www.deccanherald.com/business/technology/amazon-india-records-biggest-prime-day-sale-event-1239003.html">Amazon India records biggest Prime Day sale event</a></strong></p>.<p>The Florida facility will employ 50 staff and be a last stop for Amazon's Kuiper satellites before they go to space after being manufactured at the Kuiper project's primary plant in Redmond, Washington. A ten-story-tall room will allow the satellites to be fitted into rocket payload fairings, the protective shell around satellites that sit atop the rocket.</p>.<p>Amazon began construction of the site in January and plans to complete it by late 2024, with a target to ship its first batch of satellites to the area for processing in the second half of 2025, said Steve Metayer, Amazon's vice president of Kuiper Production Operations.</p>.<p>That target date will kickoff a sprint for Amazon to deploy half of the network into orbit by 2026, as required by US regulators.</p>.<p>The company has bagged 77 heavy-lift rocket launch contracts, potentially worth billions of dollars combined, mostly from the Boeing-Lockheed joint venture United Launch Alliance and Jeff Bezos's space company Blue Origin.</p>.<p>Amazon plans to launch its first few prototype satellites to space by the end of the year, followed by launches of its first mass-produced satellites in 2024.</p>.<p>Testing the service with corporate and government customers will begin that year, the company said.</p>.<p>Anna Farrar, a spokeswoman for Space Florida, a state-funded entity to attract space businesses to Florida, said Amazon is eligible to receive funds under a state grant for transportation-related projects but "has not received any funding to date."</p>