While Blue Origin plows ahead with its reconstruction of its New Glenn launch pad at Cape Canaveral, damaged in a massive explosion earlier this year, it is also moving forward with new construction of an adjacent facility that will help the Space Force.

Jeff Bezos’ company was awarded a contract last year by Space Systems Command a $78.25 million contract to construct a space vehicle processing facility on the Space Coast by 2028.

Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp announced details of the facility this week on X. It won’t be just for Blue Origin, though, but to support any launch provider flying national security payloads.

Limp said the company broke ground on the Payload Processing Facility for Eastern Range.

“At 120,000 square feet, the PPF will house four payload processing bays, two encapsulation bays, and a multi‑manifest area supporting National Security Space Launch, civil, and commercial missions,” Limp posted. “This facility expands our Space Coast footprint across Brevard and Orange counties and supports continued job growth alongside our more than 4,500 employees in the region.”

One important aspect of the site will be its ability to support an 8.7‑meter, or 25-foot, diameter fairing, or nose cone section of the rocket, which is the size planned for a new larger version of New Glenn.

Blue Origin has yet to be awarded any specific task orders itself for national security launches, but it was included as one of three providers along with SpaceX and United Launch Alliance for a piece of the lucrative pie for the government’s five-year launch plan.

The payload processing facility is where payloads will get the final fueling before launch, and where they get encapsulated into the fairings before heading to their launch pads.

Right now the Department of Defense is limited in its satellite processing capacity at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, which can cause a logjam for missions.

“This partnership will enhance Blue Origin’s capabilities to operate more efficiently and expand our capacity to support a higher launch cadence to meet customer needs,” the company said in an emailed statement after winning the contract.

The Blue Origin payload facility will allow for both government and commercial use, and augment the expected rise in launches on the Space Coast in the next few years from all companies.

“This additional capacity will ensure USSF is able to continue to deliver responsive and resilient launch capabilities to the warfighter, and the public-private partnership behind the new capacity enables us to cost-share with commercial industry to our mutual benefit,” said Space Force Col. Dan Highlander.

Blue Origin had already spent $3 billion for facilities at its expansive campus in Exploration Park on Merritt Island adjacent Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, as well as the refurbished Launch Complex 36 within the Space Force station. That was before this past May’s pad explosion, which led to a concerted effort to rebuild with a goal of being able to launch New Glenn again before the end of the year.

The company is also building out a second launch pad for the larger version of New Glenn adjacent the reconstructed pad at LC-36.

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