Amazon's Project Kuiper Rivalry with SpaceX's Starlink Intensifies with $120M Investment in Kennedy Space Center

Amazon.Com, Inc AMZN is investing $120 million in new construction and high-value equipment at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to launch the first satellites for its Project Kuiper internet network.

It looks to create up to 50 new jobs on the Space Coast. 

The space will help to prepare and integrate Kuiper satellites with rockets from Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance (ULA) ahead of launches.

Amazon looks to launch two prototype satellites in the coming months to help test its network and subsystems and expects to begin production launches and early enterprise customer pilots in 2024.

More than 1,400 people across the U.S.—including cities like San Diego, Austin, New York City, and Washington, D.C.—are working on Project Kuiper.

"We have an ambitious plan to begin Project Kuiper's full-scale production launches and early customer pilots next year, and this new facility will play a critical role in helping us deliver on that timeline," said Steve Metayer, vice president of Kuiper Production Operations.

Project Kuiper will begin satellite production at a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Kirkland, Washington, by 2023.

 The 100,000-square-foot facility features a 100-foot tall high bay clean room to allow room for the payload fairing of new heavy-lift rockets like Blue Origin's New Glenn and ULA's Vulcan Centaur.

Project Kuiper is Amazon's planned constellation of 3,236 low-Earth satellites to blanket the globe, similar to Elon Musk helmed SpaceX's Starlink broadband mega constellation, which has already launched roughly 4,000 satellites into low-Earth orbit.

Amazon has secured 77 heavy-lift launch vehicles to deploy its satellite constellation, most of which will come from U.S. launch providers Blue Origin and ULA and launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

Price Action: AMZN shares traded higher by 0.27% at $130.31 on the last check Friday.