Amazon expands satellite labs in Redmond

Carolyn Adolph

December 19, 2019 / 5:07 pm

caption: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off Monday from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station carrying 60 Starlink satellites. The Starlink constellation eventually will consist of thousands of satellites designed to provide worldwide high-speed Internet service.

Amazon wants to surround the planet with satellites. And they're going to do that from new labs in Redmond.

The company says its Project Kuiper operation is expanding to two large buildings.

Amazon says it wants to end the digital divide. A United Nations report says only 55 percent of households on the planet have internet.

“The goal here is broadband everywhere,” Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said about Project Kaiper earlier this year. “You end up servicing the whole world. By definition you are accessing people who are kind of under-bandwidthed. "

Amazon wants to create a constellation of more than 3,000 satellites to do this. But Elon Musk's SpaceX also wants to give the world internet. It was Musk who first set up a satellite office for satellites in Redmond.