Who builds more satellites than any other state? If you said Florida, you’d be wrong. Sure, they launch a lot of rockets. But Washington easily takes top honors when it comes to satellites orbiting the Earth. In fact, more than half the satellites in low orbit right now were made in Washington.
SpaceX has been cranking out thousands of Starlink satellites in Redmond, Washington for several years now, and Project Kuiper satellites are starting to emerge from Amazon’s Kirkland plant.
With all the high-tech know-how here—in advanced manufacturing, hardware and software—it’s hard to argue that the space industry is alive and well in Washington State. Imagine if this place was a little lower on the latitude scale and could launch everything we build. But we’ll let others have a slice of the space pie. There’s no need to be selfish.
Things are going so well that Amazon announced a new 184,000-square-foot receiving and logistics facility in Everett. A short 30-minute hop to Amazon’s 172,000-square-foot satellite factory in Kirkland and 219,000-square-foot R&D facility in Redmond, the logistics center will allow the company to receive, sort, test and certify all the components arriving from partners across the state and country.
Eventually, the company plans to build and launch more than 3,000 low-earth orbit satellites to provide high-speed access to people around the world. Helping them achieve this will be students from the Lake Washington Institute of Technology, who will be able to become certified satellite technicians to be able to fill the state’s aerospace talent pipeline. The program is divided into two 16-credit tracks – Aerospace Assembly Specialist and Aerospace Manufacturing. Classes start in July.
Amazon has a lot at stake with Project Kuiper. The Federal Communications Commission’s license dictates that half of the 3,232 satellites need to be launched by mid-2026 and the balance by 2029. Two prototypes were successfully tested in 2023. The new logistics center will allow the company to stockpile more components in order to ramp up production at the Kirkland factory. At full rate, the company hopes to produce up to five satellites a day.