Blue Origin announced its new manufacturing campus, called Constellation Park, on October 8. The facility in Hutto, Texas, will be the manufacturing center for the company’s TeraWave satellite communications network and Quartz ground stations. The company plans to create more than 2 thousand new jobs in the next decade.
The size of the campus, which will consist of more than one building, reaches approximately 121 thousand square meters. Here, Blue Origin will produce satellite communications programs as well as solar panel arrays, avionics systems and other satellite hardware. Thus, the new area will undertake a broader task than the assembly of a single satellite model.
In addition, the employment calendar in the announcement does not mean that all positions will be opened immediately. The company employs more than 2,000 jobs in manufacturing and related fields over a ten-year period. Blue Origin currently has more than 550 employees in Texas; The new campus will build on these existing activities.
Dave Limp, the company’s CEO, touts the region’s human resources and the growth of operations in Texas. On the other hand, the statement does not specify the date on which all production lines of the facility will be put into operation. A concrete development for the reader is the announcement of the new production area and the programs to be supported there.
TeraWave and Quartz support space connectivity from both sides
Introduced in January, TeraWave is a satellite network designed for businesses, data centers and public institutions. Blue Origin noted that the system may have some optical connections. to 6 terabits/second It states that it will provide up to symmetrical data transfer. This figure is not disclosed as the speed of an internet package to be given to every home user.
The planned architecture distributes a total of 5,408 satellites into low and medium Earth orbits. 5,280 satellites in low orbit aim to reach up to 144 gigabits per second via radio frequency connections. 128 satellites in medium orbit support higher capacity optical lines. The announced start for the deployment of the network is the last quarter of 2027.
In addition, the Quartz ground station network constitutes the communication side of the satellites on the ground. The company said in its August announcement that it had built and tested the first three stations in Bermuda, New Zealand and Australia. The 3.7-meter antennas of the first stage operate in S and X bands for low orbit missions.
Quartz aims to expand to nine sites by the end of the year. The company also plans to support different orbital missions with larger, 9-meter antennas. Therefore, the Constellation Park announcement should be read as an investment that expands production capacity for both the satellite network in space and the communications infrastructure on the ground. TeraWave’s commercial usage schedule adheres to its own deployment plan.