Blue Origin breaks ground on $80 million payload facility at Cape Canaveral

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Blue Origin broke ground Monday on a new $80 million payload processing facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, an investment officials say will help support a growing number of national security, commercial and NASA missions.

The 120,000-square-foot facility will be the first commercial payload processing facility built on U.S. Space Force property.

Big picture view:

Plans call for four payload processing bays, two encapsulation bays and dedicated areas where multiple payloads can be prepared for launch.

The facility is being developed through a public-private partnership between Blue Origin and the Space Force. Officials said the project will create dozens of jobs on Florida's Space Coast while expanding infrastructure needed to support an increasing number of launches.

Col. Brian Chatman, commander of Space Launch Delta 45, said additional payload processing capacity will be critical as the United States prepares for a sharp increase in launch activity.

"The national space transportation policy just called out for us to be prepared to launch over 1,000 times by 2030 here in the United States," Chatman said. "None of that happens without payload processing."

Chatman described payload processing as a potential bottleneck as launch demand grows.

"That is the critical chokepoint that we need to get after to be able to support that launch manifest — that launch cadence to get what we need from a national security space launch perspective and to continue space dominance here in the United States," he said.

The facility will process payloads for national defense missions, commercial customers and NASA science missions, among others.

What's next:

The new payload processing facility is expected to be completed by December 2027.

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