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Amazon plans to expand its satellite facility in Florida

Amazon plans to build a secondary support facility for its Project Kuiper satellite processing center at Kennedy Space Center in Florida — a $19.5 million expansion plan that brings total investment in the site to nearly $140 million.

The 42,000-square-foot building will be placed next to the existing 100,000-square-foot structure at the satellite processing facility, Amazon said today in a blog posting. It’s meant to provide additional space for processing and storing flight hardware ahead of launch, allowing for a regular cadence of missions to deploy Project Kuiper’s 3,232-satellite constellation.

Project Kuiper is Amazon’s multibillion-dollar effort to provide broadband internet service around the globe via satellites in low Earth orbit. It’s viewed as a competitor for SpaceX’s Starlink network, which already has more than 6,000 satellites in orbit and more than 3 million subscribers.

By Alan Boyle

Mastermind of Cosmic Log, contributor to GeekWire and Universe Today, author of "The Case for Pluto: How a Little Planet Made a Big Difference," past president of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.

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