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NASA is increasingly looking to rely on private space companies
for its operations and wants to stimulate more commercial
activity in areas from space communications to sending humans to
orbit.
Amazon's Project Kuiper, a planned network of over 3,000
satellites built to beam broadband internet to remote regions,
won $67 million, while SpaceX's Starlink venture, a larger
satellite-internet network with some 2,000 satellites in space
already, received $70 million.
NASA uses its current system, called the Tracking and Data Relay
Satellite network, to communicate with spacecraft in orbit, such
as SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule when it ferries astronauts to
and from the International Space Station.
"The goal here is really to get industry to kick in with us and
develop these capabilities for customers that are not just NASA,
but other space-based customers as well, hopefully bringing down
our costs," Eli Naffah, the head of NASA's Communications
Services Project, told Reuters.
Each company is expected to complete development and
demonstrations of their satellites under the contract by 2025,
NASA said in a statement.
The other awardees include Inmarsat, SES, Telesat and ViaSat.
Competition is fierce primarily among Elon Musk's SpaceX, Amazon
and Telesat to provide broadband internet from space, a costly
commercial endeavor that could generate billions in revenue once
fully operational, analysts say.
Starlink, while not yet completed, has thousands of customers in
various countries. Amazon, further behind, aims to launch its
first two prototype satellites in late 2022.
(Reporting by Joey Roulette, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)
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