Amazon and Blue Origin — two companies owned by Jeff Bezos with separate satellite constellation plans — reached new manufacturing milestones. Amazon reached the milestone of manufacturing 1,000 Amazon Leo satellites. Separately, Blue Origin is building a new manufacturing facility in Texas to support its TeraWave satellite constellation.
The two companies issued separate releases on Thursday.
Amazon has passed the 1,000-satellite mark at its satellite factory in Kirkland, Washington. The operator has deployed 396 satellites in the constellation, reporting that only four of those satellites have been deorbited.
This number of satellites is enough to support initial service and Amazon further confirmed its plans for initial service rollout later this year.
Launch availability has been a constraint to Amazon deploying the constellation with two of its vehicles, ULA’s Vulcan Centaur and Blue Origin’s New Glenn currently out of service. Hundreds of satellites are on standby waiting for launch at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Amazon stated that satellites are already stacked for the first Amazon Leo Vulcan Centaur launch and the next Ariane 6 launch, “both expected in the coming weeks.”
“We solved the production problem. Now we’re ready to go as rockets become available,” Palcisco. “There should never be a day when a launch slot opens up and we don’t have satellites ready for it.”
Separately, Blue Origin is building a manufacturing hub in Texas to support its TeraWave satellite constellation and Quartz ground communications network. The facility announced Thursday will encompass 1.3 million square feet. Named “Constellation Park,” it is located in Hutto, Texas, north of Austin.
Blue Origin said it has more than 550 current Texas employees, including its Launch Site One in western Texas. The company plans to hire 2,000 new manufacturing and related jobs over the next 10 years.
TeraWave, announced in January, is slated to be an optically-linked constellation of satellites in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) and Medium-Earth Orbit (MEO), built for enterprise customers including enterprise, data center, and government users.
The Constellation Park campus will also house manufacturing for key Blue Origin subsystems, including solar arrays, avionics, telecommunications, and other satellite hardware.
